In this episode, we discuss why the U.S. is going to war with Iran, why it s a good idea, and how to prepare for such a conflict. Iran is an enemy of the United States and has been for nearly 50 years. They are responsible for the death of hundreds of Americans, the undermining of American allies, the spread of terror, and attempted assassinations of President Trump. Iran is also a supplier of oil to China, our chief geopolitical enemy, and a supplier to our other chief geopolitical opponent, Russia.
00:00:31.000Okay, so let's talk about the justification for the war.
00:00:34.000A lot of people are still asking, understandably, what this conflict is all about.
00:00:38.000After all, they say the administration has made a wide variety of cases.
00:00:42.000It's about preventing terrorism, or maybe it's about nuclear development or ballistic missile development, or it's about helping the Iranian people overthrow the regime.
00:00:49.000It's about an imminent threat or maybe a more distant future threat.
00:00:57.000See, as we've discussed, Iran is an enemy of the United States and has been for nearly half a century.
00:01:02.000They're responsible for the death of hundreds of Americans, the undermining of American allies, the spread of terror regionally and globally, attempted assassinations of President Trump, and massive geopolitical turmoil.
00:01:12.000Iran is also a supplier of oil to China.
00:01:14.000About 60% of all Iranian oil goes to China, our chief geopolitical opponent, and they are a supplier of drones to our other chief geopolitical opponent, Russia.
00:01:23.000And then there's the question of why now?
00:01:26.000Iran has been radically ramping up its ballistic missile facilities to the point where the United States and its allies would be unable to fully stop Iran's terror apparatus and regional power grab.
00:01:36.000Iran has been redeveloping its nuclear capacity since the 12-day war.
00:01:39.000If they achieved a nuclear weapon, it would make it nearly impossible to course correct the regime or topple it.
00:01:45.000At the same time, a unique opportunity presented itself.
00:01:48.000Millions of Iranians in the streets, hoping to overturn the regime.
00:01:51.000A uniquely weak Iranian air defense capacity and the complete collapse of the Iranian economy.
00:01:56.000It is in America's interest for Iran to pose no threat to its neighbors, the region or the world.
00:02:00.000It's in our interest to dramatically weaken that China-Russia-Iran axis.
00:02:04.000And it's in our interest to act when we can at the point of highest possible success and the point of lowest possible risk.
00:02:11.000So why doesn't the Trump administration just say all of this clearly?
00:02:14.000The Trump administration, for example, has not pointed out really the connections between Iran and Russia.
00:02:19.000The answer is because President Trump is still pursuing a settlement in Ukraine.
00:02:22.000He's trying not to alienate the Russians.
00:02:24.000The administration also is not tying Iran to China because President Trump is trying to find an off-ramp with China regarding Taiwan and doesn't want to draw China into the conflict with Iran.
00:02:33.000Trump also isn't making the case that Iran is a target of opportunity for regime change or that the United States is engaging in preemptive war, probably out of concern for rhetorical similarity to the Bush administration.
00:02:45.000This is not Iraq and Trump is not Bush.
00:02:48.000Which brings us to the bigger question, how does all of this end?
00:02:51.000We've heard a variety of goals from the Trump administration.
00:02:53.000Destruction of Iran's forward capacity, unconditional surrender, regime change.
00:02:57.000Any or all of these results would count as major wins for the Trump administration.
00:03:02.000For its part, the White House says that President Trump will set the terms of victory.
00:03:05.000Yesterday, White House press secretary Caroline Levitt explained.
00:03:09.000That Iran is in a place of unconditional surrender.
00:03:11.000He's not claiming the Iranian regime is going to come out and say that themselves.
00:03:16.000What the president means is that Iran's threats will no longer be backed by a ballistic missile arsenal that protects them from building a nuclear bomb in their country.
00:03:26.000I could make an empty threat, but if I have no actions to back it up, then it's an empty threat.
00:03:31.000And so President Trump will determine when Iran is in a place of unconditional surrender, when they no longer pose a credible and direct threat to the United States of America and our allies.
00:03:41.000Now, it sounds a little bit facetious, but it really isn't.
00:03:43.000It isn't because in the end, it is really unlikely the Iranian government is going to simply announce that it has surrendered.
00:03:49.000actually has not happened in a major American war since World War II, when General Alfred Yodel signed the German instrument of surrender in France and Japanese representatives did the same aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
00:04:00.000There have been armistic, like the Korean War.
00:04:03.000We've seen political transitions like Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela.
00:04:06.000But unconditional surrender, as in Ayatollah Mushtaba Khomeini on an American aircraft carrier signing a document, that is not going to happen.
00:04:13.000So what would unconditional surrender mean practically?
00:04:16.000As Caroline Levitt says, it would mean Iran is in no position to continue the fight in any real way.
00:04:27.000Here is a timeline of the first to 10 days of Operation Epic Fury as put out by the Department of War.
00:04:33.000I mean, that is an awfully large list of targets, including the blowing up of Iran's major air defenses.
00:04:39.000By March 3rd, the United States had emptied the Arabian Gulf Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman of all Iranian warships.
00:04:44.000By this Monday, we put 50 Iranian Navy vessels out of action.
00:04:47.000Caroline Lovitt spelled out the Iranian Navy's dire position yesterday.
00:04:51.000The United States is also annihilating the Iranian regime's navy, and we have destroyed more than 50 Iranian naval vessels, including a major drone carrier ship.
00:05:02.000None of the regime's vessels are operating in major regional waterways, and the Iranian Navy has been assessed as combat ineffective.
00:05:10.000Okay, so basically, the Iranians have been relegated to firing the occasional drone at American shipping.
00:05:16.000Well, what about suspicions that Iranians might plant mines in the Straits of Hormuz?
00:05:20.000President Trump touted destruction of those mines on Truth Social yesterday.
00:05:24.000He said, quote, I'm pleased to report that within the last few hours, we have hit and completely destroyed 10 inactive mine-laying boats and or ships with more to follow President Trump.
00:05:32.000Meanwhile, Iran's oil industry is basically at the mercy of the United States.
00:05:36.000We and our Israeli allies have attacked the oil facilities that are most directly connected to the IRGC.
00:05:40.000We're not blowing up all the oil fields or anything remotely like it.
00:05:44.000We are not doing that because we do not wish to push the Chinese into some sort of action.
00:05:49.000And also because a lot of those oil fields are still connected to an Iranian economy that supports the population.
00:05:54.000The oil fields and refineries that are being hit are directly connected to the IRGC.
00:05:59.000It's still possible that in the near future, the United States might just grab Kharga Island and take control of 90% of Iranian oil export capacity.
00:06:06.000And as for complaints that the United States is at the mercy of Iranian-caused oil shocks, that is not true.
00:06:13.000Crude oil closed yesterday at about 80 bucks.
00:06:16.000Remember, catastrophists were predicting 48 hours ago it would be at 150 or 200 bucks a barrel.
00:06:22.000As Alicia Finley points out in the Wall Street Journal, quote, unlike during past oil shocks in the 1970s and the First Gulf War, the United States does not depend on the Middle East for oil.
00:06:30.000The vast majority of the oil Americans consume is now produced in the United States and Canada.
00:06:35.000Americans will see higher prices in the short term because oil is traded globally.
00:06:39.000But we face little risk of actual supply shortages, unlike the 70s.
00:06:42.000More vulnerable is China, which gets most of its oil from the Middle East and Russia.
00:07:14.000Even if it's propaganda, I hope that it is going out to the IRGC and Basij at this point.
00:07:20.000Now, this kind of stuff could be happening all over the country.
00:07:23.000We don't really know because the regime has shut down the internet.
00:07:26.000What we do know is that the IRGC has been totally pulverized from the air.
00:07:30.000There is no money coming in to pay the Ayatollah's henchmen, and the Ayatollah himself is dead, and his ridiculous son is now supposedly running the place, and people are bowing to cardboard cutouts of him.
00:07:40.000Well, soon, as the president has suggested over and over again, it will actually be up to the Iranian people to take the final steps.
00:07:46.000Remember, this war actually began with the Iranian government slaughtering protesters in the streets, some 32,000 of them.
00:07:52.000President Trump promised help was on the way, and he has delivered.
00:07:55.000The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, seems to be preparing the Iranians for precisely that moment, that they will have to move en masse to seize their government.
00:08:02.000He wrote on X yesterday: quote, people of Iran, we are waging a historic war for liberty.
00:08:07.000This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you to remove the Ayatollah regime and gain your freedom.
00:08:11.000Together with the United States, we are hitting the tyrants of Tehran harder than ever.
00:08:15.000The Ayatollah is no more, and I know you don't want him replaced with another tyrant.
00:08:57.000Meanwhile, Reza Pahlavi, who is the crown prince, the son of the Shah, he is saying the exact same thing.
00:09:04.000He says the moment is coming when the people of Iran are going to have to rise up.
00:09:08.000Obviously, many of the people in the streets who are protesting and were being shot were supporters of Reza Pahlavi, who's put himself out there as sort of a figurehead leader, a sort of almost English monarch figure to lead a transition.
00:09:26.000He says we're now at the decisive stage of our final struggle.
00:09:32.000I urge you to secure your essential provisions as soon as possible.
00:09:37.000And for your own safety, withdraw from the streets and remain in your homes.
00:09:43.000Continue to strike and do not show up for work.
00:09:49.000Continue your nightly chance to show your unity to the military and law enforcement forces.
00:09:58.000This is your last chance to break from the oppressive forces and join your people.
00:10:09.000Well, whatever happens next, the Trump administration, along with our Israeli allies, have done unbelievable work here, destroying Iran's missile launchers and manufacturing capacity, wrecking its drone facilities, wrecking its nuclear facilities, devastating the IRGC infrastructure.
00:10:22.000All of that is a win for the United States and our allies.
00:10:25.000Joining me on the line to discuss all of this is Sham Sankar.
00:10:27.000He is the chief technology officer and executive vice president of Palantir Technologies.
00:10:31.000He actually joined Palantir as employee number 13 and then helped transform Palantir from a Silicon Valley startup into a global industry-leading software and AI company.
00:10:39.000He has a brand new book titled Mobilize, How to Reboot the American Industrial Base and Stop World War III.
00:10:48.000So why don't we begin with the current conflict in Iran?
00:10:51.000The United States obviously is utilizing technologies that are of a wildly different generation than what Iran is using.
00:10:58.000You see the full force and might of what a first world American and Israeli military look like when unleashed on a backwards military.
00:11:06.000What do you think of the American and Israeli performance?
00:11:07.000And then we'll get to sort of the shortcomings of that performance and what needs to change for the future.
00:11:13.000Well, I think the current performance has been astonishing.
00:11:16.000If you look at the volume and scale, the complexity of what's been coordinated.
00:11:20.000But I also think, to your point here, Iran really illustrates what's been happening to our industrial base over the last 30 or 40 years here.
00:11:28.000Having won the Cold War, really the impetus for writing Mobilize is that we now live in a world where we've lost deterrence.
00:11:35.000You know, if you go back as far as 2014, we had the annexation of Crimea, the militarization of the Spratly Islands in 2015.
00:11:46.000We have the Houthis holding trade hostage.
00:11:48.000And of course, this is all culminating in the current conflict that we're seeing.
00:11:52.000And it's reminding us of the fundamental lesson of World War II and the early Cold War, which is that deterrence is about production.
00:11:59.000It is not your stockpile that scares your enemy.
00:12:02.000It is your ability to generate and regenerate that stockpile.
00:12:06.000And your ability to make weapons really does matter.
00:12:09.000And when a country goes to war, the whole country goes to war.
00:12:13.000When you look at what the United States has been doing, as you mentioned, our technology is obviously far superior, not only to the Iranian technology, and then they're trying to fly F-4s from the Vietnam War era up against F-35s, which is just insane, obviously.
00:12:26.000But you also have seen how much further advanced American and Israeli technology are than Russian technologies, than many Chinese technologies, which have been seen in Iran.
00:12:36.000What do you think of sort of our comparative military prowess technologically?
00:12:39.000And then I want to get back to the supply chain argument because that is the big question is actually how we generate enough force that it scares everybody else off the ball.
00:12:50.000Yeah, I mean, without a doubt, our military is the best in the world by a wide margin.
00:12:55.000Our service members are better than we deserve.
00:12:57.000Quite frankly, the talent that is oozing out of that, the uniform services is eye-watering.
00:13:03.000And the equipment they have is breathtaking.
00:13:06.000I think the warning in that is that we shouldn't use our technological advantage as an excuse not to have quantity.
00:13:13.000You know, quantity is a quality all to its own.
00:13:23.000They just couldn't make it in any numbers that mattered whatsoever.
00:13:27.000And so having a 70% solution that you could outproduce by a factor of 50 was determinative.
00:13:33.000And as we look at broader threats, as we look at deterring China, whereas we were the best at mass production at the beginning of World War II, obviously China is the best at mass production today.
00:13:45.000And we need a strategy to counter their strategy in that regards.
00:13:48.000And I think almost through divine providence, there's a reason the AI revolution is an American phenomenon.
00:13:55.000This is David's slingshot against Goliath here.
00:13:58.000You know, you're not going to win the war with software, but you can use AI to underwrite the reindustrialization of America.
00:14:05.000And that's really important, not just narrowly in terms of weapons, because if you look at the industrial base that won World War II, it was not a defense industrial base.
00:14:45.000It doesn't tend to work in the long run, but in the short run, it can do extraordinary damage.
00:14:49.000I think that actually the October 7th war is a great example of this, where you have the most low-tech attack on Israel, and it is capable of doing tremendous damage.
00:14:57.000Obviously, over the long run, technological advantage will tell if you can ramp up your production to meet it.
00:15:02.000But your point is you shouldn't have to ramp up production to meet it.
00:15:05.000You should just be so ready that nobody ever wants to take you on.
00:15:07.000So how do we use AI to revolutionize our manufacturing industrial base?
00:15:12.000Well, the good news is this is already starting to happen.
00:15:14.000So the work that we're doing in ramping submarine production, the work that we're doing with American manufacturers outside of the defense context, the opportunity is to use AI to eliminate the deadweight loss dwell time when the factory floor is sitting idle.
00:15:28.000So an example of this would be production planning.
00:16:43.000And you're depriving yourself of that stimulus of how to do it.
00:16:46.000We see that very concretely with SpaceX.
00:16:48.000The fact that they co-locate the R ⁇ D people with the production people allows them to realize what the problems are and very quickly make the Raptor V3 eye-wateringly different and more efficient with less parts than the original Raptor engine.
00:17:01.000I mean, this makes perfect sense and nobody actually thinks about it in those terms because the truth is that if you're at home and your sink breaks, you're going to innovate a way out of your sink being broken.
00:17:10.000Whereas if you were just told, go come up with some creative solution to fix sinks.
00:17:16.000The necessity is not the mother of invention.
00:17:18.000I think that maybe the flip side of what you're saying, that production and innovation are linked, is that necessity is the mother of invention.
00:17:23.000If you want to make it better and it's right in front of you, then obviously the impetus to actually go and do that is really going to be high.
00:17:30.000So all of this goes to what should the United States be focusing on when we do build up?
00:17:35.000I mean, there's been a lot of talk about what kinds of technologies we should be focused on and a lot of interesting debate about that because we've seen some low-tech elements that we've underproduced.
00:17:46.000But at the same time, we are overproducing in some areas.
00:17:50.000I mean, there's been a lot of talk by the Trump administration about the continued utility of, for example, aircraft carriers, been very useful in this war.
00:17:56.000Will it be useful in a war or a conflict over the Taiwan Straits?
00:18:00.000We should resist the kind of Soviet communist central planning urge to think that we can, from a top-down perspective, design the perfect force structure.
00:18:09.000One of my quips has been, everybody's given up on communism, including the Russians and the Chinese, except for Cuba and the Department of Defense.
00:18:17.000Now, all credit to the Department of War as different from the Department of Defense in the last year, it is an unrecognizable place that has just slashed and burned bureaucracy and has really put us on the right footing to solve these problems with urgency.
00:18:31.000But that I think is one of the challenges.
00:18:33.000So as an example, I think in World War II, we made roughly 154 different airframes.
00:18:40.000I'm pretty sure 10 of them really mattered.
00:18:42.000But obviously, there was no way to know ex ante which 10 were going to really matter.
00:18:46.000So part of what makes our system so amazing is that we cherish what I like to call the heretic and hero.
00:18:53.000So Hyman Rickover, who built the nuclear navy in the 50s, think about this.
00:18:58.000So Oppenheimer, the father of the bomb, thought that Rickover is going to fail.
00:19:07.000There's no way you're going to build nuclear-powered submarines.
00:19:09.000Think about the chutzpah that's needed to say, yeah, I know you're the best at this in the world, but I think I can still do this.
00:19:15.000And the humiliation that guy had to suffer, his first office was the women's restroom because the Navy was trying to figure out how to get him to quit.
00:19:22.000But that is actually, if you look at the history of defense innovation, it always looks like that.
00:19:26.000Churchill, as the head of the Royal Navy, built the tank.
00:19:30.000He had to call it the landship because obviously in the Admiralty, he wasn't allowed to build ground warfare equipment.
00:19:37.000But it shows you that our greatest innovations always come from this kernel of heresy, someone who's thinking differently.
00:19:45.000And I think it's really important in this moment to remember because a lot of the lessons, the wrong lessons we learned having won the Cold War, is that you can rely on the system, that there is a process that's going to generate that.
00:19:56.000And a big part of the message of mobilize is, no, there isn't.
00:20:00.000What has always generated victory is incredibly compelling humans who are just almost pathologically committed to success and winning and their ideas.
00:20:08.000Whether it was Andrew Higgins and the Higgins boat that won the war, the Navy tried to kill this boat, but in the end, 92% of all boats in World War II were Higgins boats.
00:20:17.000Can you imagine what would have happened?
00:20:18.000We would not have landed at Normandy successfully without the Higgins boat, you know, or Edward Hall and the Minuteman and just a very feisty character who was fired more than once, but still in the end was the only guy who could give us a solid fueled rocket ICBM.
00:20:35.000So I want to finish by asking you where you think the United States currently stands geopolitically.
00:20:40.000Obviously, there's a lot of worry, I think proper worry under both the Obama and the Biden administrations about the recession of American power in the world, the attempt to almost draw spheres of influence.
00:20:51.000President Trump is fighting back hard against that.
00:20:53.000Obviously, there have been a lot of sort of interesting interpretations of what was going on inside the Trump administration was the Don Rowe doctrine that we were going to essentially dominate the Western hemisphere, but the Eastern hemisphere, we're kind of going to leave alone.
00:21:04.000We're going to allow Russia to carve out its sphere of influence and China to carve out its sphere of influence.
00:21:08.000President Trump seems to be cutting hard against that.
00:21:11.000And right now, it seems to me that the United States actually stands at the brink of a historic opportunity to extend its global dominance by a century, by two centuries, given our advantage in terms of innovation, in terms of tech, and in terms of the economic capacity.
00:21:25.000But it does require some of the willpower that you're talking about.
00:21:28.000Where do you think that we stand, especially as we, I assume, draw toward the end of the conflict in Iran?
00:21:34.000Well, I think will is exactly the issue because I see the same opportunity you do.
00:21:38.000The American worker built the 20th century.
00:21:40.000We have an opportunity for the American worker to build the 21st century.
00:21:43.000It requires our greatest threat is suicide, not homicide.
00:21:46.000It's our ability to realize that we need to reindustrialize, that we need to invest in technologies that make the American worker more productive, make the American worker more prosperous.
00:21:55.000That requires us as a whole to be unwarfitting, both in the literal sense, like we need to make a lot more munitions.
00:22:02.000This is the basis of underwriting our deterrence, but also as an economy generally, in terms of how quickly we are implementing these technologies to realize, remember, the end goal is to realize prosperity for the American people.
00:22:23.000Well, if President Trump, Pahlavi, and Tenyah were to have their way and the Iranian people were to rise up, it would make a transformational change in the Middle East.
00:22:29.000In the meantime, obviously, the place is still rife with conflict, which is why our sponsors, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, exist.
00:22:37.000So let me paint you a picture of what's going on right now, actually.
00:22:41.000You have a few seconds to grab your kids and run to a bomb shelter.
00:22:44.000Now, imagine that you're elderly and things don't kind of work like they used to.
00:22:47.000Getting downstairs can feel impossible.
00:22:49.000And then you end up in a bomb shelter for hours, even days, because you don't want to go up and down the stairs.
00:22:54.000That sort of stuff is happening across Israel as Operation Epic Fury continues.
00:22:58.000America and Israel are winning, but obviously the situation on the ground means that lots of people are rushing to bomb shelters.
00:23:04.000It means that homes have been destroyed.
00:23:05.000That is why the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is there on the ground bringing food, emergency equipment, care for children, and help for the elderly, and also supplying bomb shelters and medical centers with critically needed essentials.
00:23:16.000If you've ever wondered what it looks like to stand with Israel for good against evil, this would be it.
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00:24:55.000The Washington Post is now reporting that pro-Iran accounts have been overwhelming social media with AI slop connecting Trump with Jeffrey Epstein.
00:25:03.000According to the Post, quote, to erode public support for the joint U.S.-Israel military operation, Iranian state media has sought to portray those countries' leaders as part of a corrupt and depraved Epstein class or Epstein regime.
00:25:14.000While such content often fails to gain much trash outside Iran, the message is spreading through generically named news accounts that researchers say appear to be using the Epstein conspiracy theories to serve pro-Iran talking points to a global audience.
00:25:26.000The Epstein Posts are part of a maelstrom of Iran-related misinformation that has engulfed social media since February 28th, when strikes by the United States and Israel killed the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and touched off a conflict that has spread across the Middle East.
00:25:38.000Next in with real footage of the conflict are dramatic videos of missile strikes, downfighter jets, earth-shaking explosions that have racked up millions of views on X, TikTok, Instagram, and Telegram, only to be debunked as AI-generated fakes, real footage from past conflicts being passed off as new, or scenes from video games.
00:25:54.000Well, here's the thing: Iran has found pretty fertile ground for this psyop.
00:25:58.000Members of the grievance party, eager to spread rumors of conspiratorial cabals who are actually running the world.
00:26:03.000In their view, President Trump is never the decision maker.
00:26:06.000It's deeper, darker forces who are in true control.
00:26:09.000Jimmy Kimmel, right on Q, exemplified this last night when he thought it was absolutely hilarious to point out that Trump's actions in Iran are supposedly a distraction from the Epstein files.
00:26:18.000Because, of course, the conspiracy can't end with Jeffrey Epstein.
00:26:23.000Now, entire wars are being started by the Epstein cabal.
00:26:26.000The same thing that those with Iranian propaganda syndrome and the people promoting it, like Iran, are saying.
00:26:32.000Trump claims we are way ahead of schedule on the war.
00:26:35.000He's got a schedule, which means it should be over just around the time we see his taxes and the rest of the Trump-Epstein files.
00:26:42.000Ironically, this war he launched to distract us from those could turn out to be more damaging to him than the Trump-Epstein files themselves.
00:26:50.000They're saying this could be worse, and that would mean he'd have to come up with another distraction from the war.
00:26:57.000And if you do need that, Mr. President, I got a good warning.
00:26:59.000You know what would distract us from the war?
00:27:01.000Release the unreleased Trump-Epstein files.
00:27:03.000That would be a shiny object we can gather around.
00:27:09.000Now, again, to be fair to Kimmel, he probably didn't need Iranian propaganda in order to push that trash.
00:27:16.000The same is probably true of Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a man so pro-Iran that he lobbied just a few years ago to remove the IRGC from America's list of sanctioned terror groups.
00:27:25.000Well, now he's out there promoting lies about how America is somehow losing a war in which we've absolutely devastated our enemies.
00:27:31.000I just came from a two-hour closed-door classified briefing on the war.
00:27:38.000Just confirmed to me it's totally incoherent.
00:27:41.000We are not going to be able to achieve any of our stated objectives.
00:27:45.000But I mention it because it's another closed-door briefing.
00:27:49.000We have still not yet heard a full explanation as to why this is necessary.
00:27:56.000We still have had no hearings in front of Congress that the public can see.
00:28:02.000Because if the president did what the Constitution says, come to Congress to get authorization for this war, he wouldn't get it.
00:28:10.000The American people would demand that their member of Congress, their senator, whether they be a Republican or Democrat, vote no because this is a disaster of epic proportions.
00:28:55.000Joe keeps insisting that this is an endless war.
00:28:58.000Now, that's wild because we are less than two weeks into the war, and it's not going to last probably more than another two weeks when Michael Schellenberger pointed this out on his show.
00:29:08.000Joe then responded that all wars are endless, which, I mean, they're not.
00:29:17.000That's not ultimately, they're not acting on the basis of achieving regime change.
00:29:21.000But it just seems so insane based on what he ran on.
00:29:24.000I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right?
00:29:27.000He ran on no more wars and these stupid, senseless wars.
00:29:31.000And then we have one that we can't even really clearly define why we did it.
00:29:37.000Well, but he said he's against endless wars.
00:30:09.000No one is feeling betrayed unless they fundamentally misunderstood President Trump's foreign policy from the get-go.
00:30:15.000So why then is Joe saying what he is saying?
00:30:18.000Well, as I say, he had on Michael Schellenberger yesterday, and Schellenberger is a reporter who had originally posited that the Jeffrey Epstein story was about foreign intelligence and child sex trafficking to prominent people.
00:30:28.000And then he bothered to look at the evidence.
00:30:32.000He found a far more prosaic grift and sexual abuse story in which Jeffrey Epstein built rich people for money and used that money to pursue his sick fetishes.
00:30:41.000And he continued to posit that somehow the real story of the Iran war and everything else is that Donald Trump is somehow being blackmailed by Epstein material.
00:31:34.000That mindset is the most exploitable mentality possible for bad actors.
00:31:37.000Iran knows this, which is why they are spreading it.
00:31:39.000And ironically, people who pose as the great skeptics of the system, the people who suspect a conspiracy lurking around every single corner, are actually often drinking from a well poisoned by actual Iranian propaganda.
00:31:50.000Now, to be fair, some people don't need Iranian propaganda to push this stupidity.
00:31:54.000True members of the Grievance Party don't need any encouragement at all.
00:31:57.000They despise America's institutions and history just as much as the Iranian government does.
00:32:01.000A couple of days ago, the Lord Hawha of the Middle East tried to liken the United States to Japan before Pearl Harbor.
00:32:07.000And that came just days after claiming that President Trump's call for unconditional surrender was a prelude to the mass of Iranian women by Americans.
00:32:17.000But if it ever emerges that our diplomatic efforts with Iran, both in February of this year and in June of last year, were fake and they were designed to lull the Iranians into a false sense of security so we could launch a sneak attack on them.
00:32:45.000And anyone who participated in that needs to be punished for it right away.
00:32:48.000So our negotiators who are negotiating, if they're providing cover for military preparation, they need to be punished.
00:32:55.000The bad guys, remember, are the Americans, always and forever.
00:32:58.000Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas is absolutely correct when he says that he does not share a party with people who mirror Elizabeth Warren's economic policies or Rashida Tlaib's foreign policy.
00:33:45.000Well, speaking of people who share Rashida Tlaib's foreign policy, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, true isolationist and sort of charter member of the Noam Chomsky Foreign Policy Brigade on the far right of the Republican Party.
00:33:59.000He was complaining about the war in Iran, suggesting that somehow it is a symptom of a policy to free all oppressed people, which will lead to endless war.
00:34:08.000Again, this is, if there is such a thing as AI slop, this is just political slop, true slop.
00:34:16.000As far as the reasons for the war, there have been many different reasons floated, but none of them, I think, have been very convincing.
00:34:22.000One reason is that we want to free the Iranian people from oppression.
00:34:27.000I want people to be free around the world.
00:34:29.000But if our foreign policy is to free oppressed people, I'm not sure where war would end.
00:34:34.000I mean, there are many people that are said to be oppressed in China, Tibet, the Uyghurs, North Korea, Russia.
00:34:42.000Where would war end if our goal is to free oppressed people?
00:34:45.000So I think that goal is too grandiose and would perpetually tie us up in war.
00:34:52.000Well, number one, it turns out that that's not our actual policy.
00:34:56.000Our policy is to end threats to the United States and our interests.
00:34:58.000We're not focused on going to war to end the oppression of the North Koreans or the Chinese, and Rand Paul knows that.
00:35:03.000But, you know, the propagandists have to propagandize.
00:35:05.000And that, in the end, is Iran's last resort, getting some fifth columnists in the United States to push their ideas.
00:35:11.000Iran is still claiming that its own attacks on surrounding countries were false flags by, wait for it, the Jews.
00:35:18.000I mean, guys, I'd understand that junk coming from Tucker, but have some respect for yourselves.
00:35:26.000The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying, regarding the Republic of Azraj on Turkey and Cyprus, the general staff of the armed forces explicitly and officially announced that no such projectiles were launched from within Iran or by our military forces.
00:35:45.000As for Cyprus, even British officials confirmed no such incident took place.
00:35:54.000They've consistently warned against false flag operations.
00:36:00.000The Baghdad bobbing, the Baghdad bobbing is extremely strong here.
00:36:07.000Nonetheless, some will be taken in by all of this, undoubtedly.
00:36:09.000They'll believe that somehow, despite America's overwhelming victory in Iran, that we are winning right now, we've lost.
00:36:15.000Maybe they'll point to the plethora of bad information on X.
00:36:18.000Now, listen, there are a lot of people who fall for this sort of stuff.
00:36:20.000A lot of Democrats, members of the grievance right who will promote it.
00:36:23.000The fact that they are mirroring the same conspiratorial insanity as the government of Iran says something about their priorities, the priority being undermining faith and trust in the Trump administration and also America's institutions more broadly.
00:36:33.000So, for those who are suffering from Iranian propaganda syndrome, if you find yourself mirroring the false narratives of people who seek America's destruction, try to get off the juice.
00:36:43.000Seriously, listen, it's easy to fall for propaganda, but that is why we launched the Daily Wire: to help you not fall for the propaganda.
00:36:50.000You should subscribe, but also, let me tell you about how we run our business here at The Daily Wire.
00:36:54.000Well, when we launched, we had all the usual uncertainties.
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00:38:22.000Join me, Michael Knowles and Andrew Clayton, for a completely live conversation about the biggest stories in the headlines, the media narrative surrounding them, and of course, our Oscars preview.
00:38:30.000Yeah, you forgot the Oscars are happening, didn't you?
00:38:32.000I watched every single Oscar-nominated film this year.
00:38:37.000Watch Friendly Fire live this Friday, yes, Friday, the 13th, at 2 p.m. Eastern on DailyWire.com and the Daily Wire Plus app.
00:38:44.000Many in the legacy media continue their quest to cover for radical Islam.
00:38:47.000CNN yesterday had to retract its insane article seemingly sympathizing with ISIS terrorists who tried to lob IEVs at a New York protest.
00:38:54.000The original CNN article explained, as we talked about yesterday, quote: two Pennsylvania teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for what could have been a normal day enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather.
00:39:04.000But in less than an hour, their lives would drastically change as the pair would be arrested for throwing homemade bombs during an anti-Muslim protest outside of Mayor Zorhan Mamdani's home.
00:39:13.000Well, CNN had to retract that one because why are you romanticizing terror?
00:39:18.000Like they were going to go out on a date and then things went wildly wrong.
00:39:26.000They said, quote, a post regarding the two individuals arrested for throwing homemade bombs outside of New York City, Mayor Zoran Mamzani's home failed to reflect the gravity of the incident, thereby breaching the editorial standards we require for all our reporting.
00:39:40.000Well, that actually wasn't CNN's only screw-up of the day yesterday on this story.
00:39:43.000Last night, Abby Phillip, or her teleprompter, reported that the IED bombers were targeting Zoran Mamzani.
00:39:51.000Two Republicans say Muslims don't belong here after an attempted terror attack against New York's Mayor Zorhan Mamdani.
00:39:59.000And the House Speaker, Mike Johnson, says nothing really to condemn those comments.
00:40:05.000I'm just going to point out that the attacks by the IED throwing ISIS guys were against an anti-Islam rally, not against Zor Mamzani.
00:40:14.000She walked it back online the next day.
00:40:16.000But why is it that for the legacy media, all editorial errors run in one direction and one direction only, the direction of sympathy for the far left and their radical Islamist fellow travelers?
00:40:25.000Well, in other news, hot debate has now broken out in the Republican Party over the so-called SAVE Act.
00:40:29.000Republicans support the SAVE Act, of course.
00:40:31.000That is the act that would force voter ID nationally.
00:40:34.000Democrats in the Senate have been holding it up.
00:40:36.000President Trump correctly points out that the SAVE Act is quite popular with Americans.
00:40:40.000Boy, do they get killed because even the Democrats, you saw the numbers today?
00:40:44.000Democrats voted 86% that this stuff should be passed.
00:40:49.000The Democrats, with the Republicans, you're at 98%, but Democrats are at 86%, except for the people that run the Democrat Party because they want to try and win elections illegally.
00:41:02.000The only reason you vote against voter ID is because you want to cheat.
00:42:07.000Look, you have them in a corner, and they're listening to every word I'm saying.
00:42:10.000It doesn't matter because they can't win it politically.
00:42:13.000Because when they say, we don't want voter identification, we don't want proof of citizenship, all these things are just losers for them.
00:42:20.000And Chuck Schumer, for his part, keeps arguing that if we clean the voter rolls of people who have moved or are dead and require people to use voter ID, somehow this is going to result in mass voter disenfranchisement, a proposition that pretty much no one actually agrees with.
00:42:34.000It makes it, it allows ICE to kick tens of billions of people off the rolls, off the rolls, and they don't tell them until election day.
00:42:46.000And you show them and you say, you're not registered anymore.
00:42:54.000This is a bill that destroys the country.
00:42:57.000And it is not about showing ID when you show up to vote.
00:43:01.000It's about the voter registration rolls, destroying them, purging them, not letting people know, and taking the rights in an algorithm put together by ICE, put together by Doge and Musk.
00:43:35.000And it's not hard to determine where and how to vote.
00:43:38.000People have been figuring out for decades.
00:43:39.000But now, because Democrats are trying to filibuster the SAVE Act in the Senate, which means to prevent it from passing by forcing Republicans to find 60 votes in the Senate, President Trump is talking about killing the filibuster.
00:43:49.000Senate Majority Leader John Thune, by contrast, says, no, we're not doing that.
00:43:53.000We don't have the votes either to proceed, get on a talking filibuster, nor to sustain one if we got on it.
00:44:12.000Well, we've conveyed that to him, but we'll continue to make that argument because I think it's important that everybody understand that this really is about the votes.
00:44:27.000He's concerned if Republicans kill the filibuster, the next time the Democrats have a majority in the House and the Senate and run the presidency, they simply run roughshod over Republicans and essentially end any chance of possible parity in future elections, all with just 51 votes.
00:44:40.000They add new states, they add new senators, they change the voting rules and all the rest.
00:44:43.000There have been two arguments that have been put out there to counter John Thune's argument.
00:44:48.000First, there's the argument that Republicans should end what's known as the talking filibuster.
00:44:52.000Now, when most people think about the filibuster, they think of Jimmy Stewart talking for hours until he faints and Mr. Smith goes to Washington.
00:44:58.000It takes 60 votes to ensure cloture, which means to stop a talking filibuster.
00:45:03.000Under Senate Rule 19, each senator can speak twice per day.
00:45:06.000Members of the same party can hold the floor continuously, physically.
00:45:10.000Theoretically, John Thune could force Democrats to do that, like get up there and just talk and talk and talk and talk.
00:45:15.000In the past, however, opposing parties have allowed the so-called silent filibuster, a filibuster that all agree would be possible in the absence of talking for days at a time.
00:45:23.000So people basically say, you don't have 60 votes.
00:45:26.000Instead of making us talk for weeks on end, we are just going to, you know, not do that.
00:45:31.000And you don't have 60 votes to kill it anyway.
00:45:32.000So why doesn't John Thune kill the silent filibuster?
00:45:36.000First, if 47 Democrats each gave six-hour speeches and they did that continuously in a cycle, they could stop the business of the Senate for literally months.
00:45:45.000Also, the only way to keep the Senate in session in order to keep the pressure on Democrats to keep talking would be for Republicans to maintain a quorum, meaning 51 senators nearby.
00:45:53.000If they don't have a quorum, like if somebody goes home and suddenly there are 49 senators, Democrats can move to adjourn the session and then the clock restarts and all the senators can speak twice again, which means that killing the silent filibuster basically ensures pain but not gain.
00:46:06.000Now, that's not going to stop critics from attacking Senator Thune and other Republicans as somehow feeble or insufficient in their defense of conservative policy.
00:46:14.000That's always the rap from people in my industry toward politicians that the reason that Republicans don't do enough is a lack of will.
00:46:20.000If only they had more Nietzschean willpower or maybe they're corrupt.
00:46:23.000But that's actually not what's happening.
00:46:24.000The simple case here is that in the Senate, which happens to be a more collegial body than the House, I know a lot of senators, Republicans must always have one eye on the question of what happens when the political shoe is on the other foot.
00:46:34.000Just as Democrats killed the judicial filibuster only to watch Republicans stack the Supreme Court, Republicans have to be careful not to kill the filibuster on other issues just to watch Democrats ram through fundamental changes to the nature of American life and law.
00:46:49.000There's no question that that is what is happening.
00:46:51.000The Democratic shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, purportedly over there, upset over the Trump administration's ICE policies, continues.
00:46:58.000Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, was fighting mad over this yesterday.
00:47:03.000Democrats have made the conscious political decision, crazy as it is, by word and by deed, to protect criminal, illegal aliens over hardworking American citizens.
00:47:15.000Democrats have dragged the American people through multiple shutdowns now.
00:47:19.000First, to protect, remember last time in the longest shutdown in history, last fall, their argument was they wanted to protect health care benefits for illegal aliens, and now they've jeopardized the security of every American citizen to keep criminal illegal aliens in our country.
00:47:32.000They want to fight the Department of Homeland Security and the rule of law.
00:47:38.000Senator Thune points out the Democrats have gone totally awol.
00:47:41.000They're not even negotiating over the DHS shutdown.
00:47:45.000So here we are in the 26th day now of a government shutdown instigated by Democrats after they had agreed to the very bill that they are now opposing and are now opposing, even sitting down and talking and negotiating on the things they say they want.
00:48:08.000Well, Democrats, for their part, seem to think they're winning this political fight anyway.
00:48:12.000Senator Jeff Merkley is out there claiming, as always, that ICE is the Gestapo.
00:48:19.000Now, Trump has turned ICE into secret police.
00:48:24.000I can't believe that we now have secret police in America, but we do.
00:48:29.000I well recall studying secret police back when I was in college, and the basic mark of them was they'd show up in unmarked vans, unmarked uniforms, no judicial warrant, knock down doors without a judicial warrant, grab people, detain them, and often prevent them from having access and communication with families or lawyers.
00:48:56.000All of that's happening right now in America.
00:49:00.000We now have a secret police called ICE.
00:49:03.000Well, I mean, it's not that secret since you're calling it ICE and you just explained everything that they're doing and also all the things that they are doing are in compliance with federal law in order to deport illegal immigrants.
00:49:13.000But you keep going with those Gestapo comparisons.
00:49:46.000And I feel like we're pretty much helpless to do anything because the Republican Party will not stand up to this full.
00:49:53.000Yes, we are in a reign of terror because what reign of terrors are very, very famous for is bat bleep loons wearing extremely garish jewelry, jabbering on television for long periods of time against the regime.
00:50:06.000That's what Reigns of Terror are famous for, is for letting people jabber to the crowd about how terrible the regime is.
00:50:13.000For some reason, Democrats seem to think that this DHS shutdown is a winner.
00:50:27.000By the way, California Governor Gavin Newsom is stuck at 27% approval.
00:50:30.000Well, maybe that's because he has so poorly handled California.
00:50:34.000A breaking story from CBS News shows massive hospice fraud in Gavin Newsome state.
00:50:38.000According to that report, quote, three years ago, California's state auditor sounded the alarm that L.A. County had seen a 1,500% increase in hospice companies since 2010, more than six times the national average relative to its elderly population.
00:50:51.000Auditors estimated LA County hospices overbuild Medicare by $105 million in a single year.
00:50:58.000CBS News analysis reveals that over 700 of the roughly 1,800 hospices in LA County trigger multiple red flags for fraud as defined by the state.
00:51:07.000Well, I mean, that's not great for the governor of California, but I guess at least his wife isn't pushing weird gender films in California classrooms while paying herself a bunch of money.
00:51:15.000Sorry, actually, new report in that did happen.
00:51:19.000According to the New York Post, Jennifer Siebel Newsome, a documentary filmmaker, quote, leaned on her powerful hubby and his education board to push preachy flicks about toxic masculinity into classrooms, casting her husband as an enlightened Democratic savior, all while raking in up to $300,000 annually through her nonprofit, the Representation Project and for-profit outfit Girls Club Entertainment.
00:51:39.000Well, I guess the good news is that now they can afford to eat at the French laundry.
00:51:43.000Alrighty, folks, the show is continuing.
00:51:45.000You know, when I say at the end of the public show, that that's the end of the, there is like more show to come.
00:51:50.000And this is where I answer your questions and you get to interact directly with me and we can be best friends, but only if you become a member.
00:51:55.000Head on over to dailywire.com right now and become a subscriber.
00:51:59.000Legal sent this list of everything we're not allowed to do in season two.