00:00:06.000Is it the social media companies or the government, or is it you?
00:00:09.000There's a landmark lawsuit that just sent a gigantic shockwave through Silicon Valley with Meta, that's Facebook, and YouTube found negligent in facilitating social media addiction.
00:00:17.000So, today we're going to break down the case that could upend big tech, reshape AI regulation, and force a national reckoning over parenting, power, and responsibility.
00:00:25.000Plus, we'll get into the latest on Iran.
00:00:27.000Is the U.S. about to take down the regime wholesale?
00:00:39.000All right, major legal news in the world of social media and AI.
00:00:42.000This breaking news is brought to you by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
00:00:46.000Visit benforthefellowship.org to provide life-saving support like food, shelter, and emergency services today.
00:00:51.000That's one word: benforthefellowship.org.
00:00:55.000So, are you responsible for what your kids watch when it comes to social media?
00:00:59.000That is the big issue at the heart of a new legal case against Meta and YouTube.
00:01:03.000That legal case found both companies were negligent in facilitating social media addiction.
00:01:08.000So, according to the New York Times, the Bellwether case, which was brought by a now 20-year-old woman identified as KJM or Kaylee, had accused social media companies of creating products as addictive as cigarettes or digital casinos.
00:01:21.000KJM sued Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, and Google's YouTube over features like infinite scroll and algorithmic recommendations, she claimed led to anxiety and depression.
00:01:32.000Kaylee said she'd begun using social media at the age of six and claimed the sites caused personal injury, including body dysmorphia and thoughts of self-harm.
00:01:39.000Now, Variety reports on this too, and they say that the verdict is rooted in an argument around cigarette addiction.
00:01:45.000So, remember, back in the 1990s, there were all these settlements with the big tobacco companies where it was found that the tobacco companies fraudulently marketed products they knew were addictive as non-addictive, and that drew millions of people into serious health risks like lung cancer.
00:02:00.000And honestly, that doesn't seem like a crazy take.
00:02:03.000We were told originally that social media would be a gigantic benefit for all of us, it would open new vistas, we'd all experience new worlds, we'd have so many friends.
00:02:12.000Yeah, they'd be Facebook friends, but they were still friends.
00:03:15.000That's why there's that little sound effect.
00:03:17.000It's almost a literal Pavlovian response, right?
00:03:19.000A Pavlovian response originally was like you ring a bell in front of a dog and you feed that dog a piece of meat at the same time.
00:03:26.000And eventually, when you ring the bell, the dog will start to salivate, even if the meat isn't there because the brain has now been trained.
00:03:35.000And so social media companies do that too.
00:03:37.000This is why when you scroll, there's like a little sound effect that you do.
00:03:40.000Again, the idea there is that you're going to get a dopamine hit, even if nothing new appears, just because you hear that little sound effect.
00:03:47.000Well, social media companies are arguing that they're not the ones who are actually doing the addicting to the really serious stuff.
00:03:53.000So they say, sure, our algorithms are designed to make you click, but it's the videos themselves that are responsible for the harm, not the design of the product.
00:04:01.000So, in other words, if you were watching lots of cooking videos and it fed you an infinite loop of cooking videos and not skinny influencers, you'd be totally fine.
00:04:10.000And you're the one who decides whether you are clicking on skinny influencers or whether you're clicking on cooking videos.
00:04:16.000And what's more, it turns out that these social media companies aren't the ones who are actually making the content.
00:04:24.000The social media companies say we're a platform like a phone line.
00:04:28.000Now, yes, they make money by featuring viral content, but it's the consumer who is picking which content to actually watch.
00:04:35.000And it is the person who is posting the content who's actually responsible for the content, unless it's an AI or a bot these days.
00:04:43.000Well, so far, social media companies have been avoiding legal culpability by citing section 230.
00:04:48.000Section 230 is a section that says that if you're a platform, meaning like your website, you have a comments section, you're not responsible for what's in the comments.
00:04:57.000If you're YouTube, you're not responsible for the content of the videos that are on YouTube because you're just providing the platform on which others can post.
00:05:06.000So, Section 230 says that all of these platforms ought not be held liable for content produced by others.
00:05:12.000But that's not really kind of on point.
00:05:14.000The actual argument here is that these social media sites are by their very nature addictive, and that almost no matter what the content is, the medium is damaging to kids.
00:05:24.000According to Variety, during opening arguments, one of KJM's lawyers, again, Mark Lanier, presented the jury internal company documents from Meta and YouTube that showed tech executives knew of and discussed the negative effects of their products on children.
00:05:37.000Meta countered that KJM's mental health issues were not caused by social media.
00:05:41.000They were caused by familial abuse and turmoil.
00:05:44.000YouTube said it's not even a social media company and that its features are not designed to be addictive, which, again, is sort of true about YouTube, right?
00:05:52.000They have an infinite feed where if you just watch, it goes to autoplay, but Netflix has autoplay too.
00:05:57.000According to ABC7, Meta consistently argued that Kaylee had struggled with her mental health separate from her social media use, often pointing to her turbulent home life, apparently.
00:06:07.000Meta also said, now one of her therapists identified social media as a cause of her mental health issues in a statement following closing arguments.
00:06:14.000But the plaintiffs didn't have to prove that social media actually caused Kaylee's struggles.
00:06:18.000They just showed that it was a substantial factor in causing her harm.
00:06:22.000So this raises a broader question for parents.
00:06:25.000Are you responsible for your children and their social media use?
00:06:32.000My kids aren't on social media because they are banned from using social media.
00:06:36.000And it turns out that kids who are addicted to TV also don't have great lives, but we don't actually hold the TV companies responsible for that fact.
00:06:45.000Like nobody's suing Apple because your kid is watching Apple TV all day.
00:06:49.000That's a point made by Meta's president, Dina Powell McCormick yesterday.
00:06:53.000You know, as a mom, this is really important to me and very personal.
00:06:59.000I see firsthand just how hard the company is trying to ensure that there's not harmful content, to ensure that we're empowering parents to the best of our ability.
00:07:09.000And it's something that I watch being focused on every single day.
00:07:13.000We respectfully disagree with that decision and we're appealing.
00:07:18.000Now, again, she's not totally wrong here.
00:07:21.000And the fact is that as a parent of four kids going on five, I'm all over what my kids are consuming.
00:07:32.000They do not have interactive capability on social media or anything like this.
00:07:35.000So this issue is kind of a sticky wicket because, of course, social media companies are responsible for part of the problem because, again, dopamine response.
00:07:42.000And yes, parents are responsible for the problem.
00:07:58.000It's what lots of countries are doing right now, and they are correct to do it.
00:08:02.000Users should have to register as over 18.
00:08:04.000Companies that don't do it should be held legally accountable.
00:08:08.000I mean, again, if we're going to actually carry this analogy all the way through, right, if we're going to treat social media like tobacco or alcohol, then the answer wasn't to sue tobacco companies for kids smoking.
00:08:24.000The reason I'm a little bit averse to the lawsuit of all of this is because I think that it's going to extend now to adults.
00:08:29.000I think what's actually going to happen is this is going to be used as a broader argument, not just against social media, where I'm relatively indifferent to tell the truth, but to actual useful technologies like AI.
00:08:40.000Because this is a big societal question.
00:08:42.000Should we blame technology for our own failures as adults?
00:09:13.000My biggest problem here is that we start blaming technologies for our failures as adults.
00:09:19.000We actually have to look to ourselves to solve some of these problems.
00:09:23.000Now, again, I'm going to point out AI here because AI, unlike social media, I think social media, there's an argument to be made that social media barely has positives.
00:09:32.000I think that for a person who runs a company that uses social media because that is the way people consume information, I will say that I think that social media has been a massive net negative for humanity in general, a massive net negative.
00:09:47.000I do not think the same thing is true of AI, which is a world-changing technology.
00:09:51.000So six days ago, the Trump administration issued a six-point comprehensive national legislative framework.
00:09:57.000The first point of that framework was the most salient in this context.
00:10:00.000They said, quote, protecting children and empowering parents.
00:10:03.000Parents are best equipped to manage their children's digital environment and upbringing.
00:10:07.000The administration is calling on Congress to give parents tools to effectively do that, such as account controls to protect their children's privacy and manage their device use.
00:10:15.000And again, I think that parents ought to be the first line here because, you know, should we have a ban on kids using chat GPT?
00:10:55.000And so I went over to Gemini and I said, I need you to explain this to me like I'm a 12-year-old.
00:11:01.000And it explained it, and I just had her read it, and suddenly she understood it.
00:11:04.000So it is a useful technology, and parents should be the first line of defense here.
00:11:09.000The Trump administration has formed a technology council.
00:11:12.000It's filled with some heavy tech hitters to look into regulation of technologies like AI.
00:11:17.000The Wall Street Journal is reporting that President Trump installed some of the biggest names in business, including Meta Platform's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison, and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang to a technology council to weigh in on AI policy and other issues.
00:11:32.000The president's council of advisors on science and tech, or PCAST, will be co-chaired by David Sachs, which makes sense.
00:11:38.000He has served as the White House AI and CryptoZAR, as well as Michael Kratios, another tech advisor.
00:11:43.000President Trump named an initial batch of 13 members from the industry, including Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell on Wednesday.
00:11:51.000The council could ultimately include 24 people according to an executive order.
00:11:58.000I don't want a bunch of Congress people making the recommendations.
00:12:02.000I mean, have you ever met the people in Congress?
00:12:04.000They do not understand what computer is, they don't computer.
00:12:08.000I've literally sat in front of Congress people who do not understand what an internet is.
00:12:13.000So letting the people who actually understand the tech make recommendations and then holding them accountable for those recommendations, that is a hell of a lot better than allowing our legislators, many of whom are double-digit IQs, who are still fighting the advent of the internet.
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00:13:53.000I mean, the Democrats in particular have now become total tech doomers, which is kind of amazing because if you go back a few years, they were not doomers.
00:13:59.000They were hanging out with the tech bros.
00:14:01.000And then it turns out that their heavily regulatory views on tech and also their insane social liberalism drove a lot of tech founders to move toward the right.
00:14:11.000And now all of a sudden, everybody on the left is anti-tech.
00:14:15.000So you have Bernie Sanders explaining that AI is an existential threat to the human race.
00:14:19.000I mean, how this person is a respected human is beyond me.
00:14:23.000This man is a leech on the ass of society.
00:14:25.000He has always been a leech on the ass of society.
00:14:27.000If you want to talk about existential threats to the human race, how about the philosophy that he expounds, the Marxist philosophy that treats all human individuals as part of a broader collective to be manipulated, to be manipulated by people like him.
00:14:42.000But here's Bernie saying AI is an existential.
00:14:44.000Again, do I think that Bernie Sanders even knows how to use Gemini?
00:14:50.000I think Bernie Sanders sits there and writes in longhand requests to his aides who then go on Gemini.
00:14:58.000Listening to Bernie Sanders talk about Gemini is like watching a monkey try to understand quantum physics.
00:16:16.000Now everything is falling apart, says Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who again barely has a couple of neurons to rub together.
00:16:24.000You know, just a few short years ago, Sam Altman came before Congress and in a direct plea, he begged us to regulate this industry.
00:16:39.000He said that these tools were under no circumstances ready, nor should they be integrated into weapons of war.
00:16:48.000That we must impose severe regulations immediately to prevent mass layoffs and to ensure that any productivity that comes of this industry can benefit working people.
00:17:01.000Three short years later, none of that has happened.
00:17:04.000And in fact, in many cases, the opposite has happened.
00:17:08.000And it is no surprise that in the four years since ChatGPT was released, we have seen AI deployed at a massive scale to create big brother-like surveillance.
00:17:20.000I mean, again, the idea of AI is to raise productivity.
00:17:23.000When you raise productivity for each worker, that tends to mean you need fewer workers, at least in the midterm.
00:17:29.000And then you get workers on the other end who are able to do those different kinds of jobs.
00:17:33.000But the Democrats have just turned anti-tech entirely.
00:17:37.000AOC is slamming the energy demands of AI, despite the fact that a huge percentage of our current job creation is coming from the building of these data centers.
00:17:47.000Because of the massive amounts of energy they use, power and water utility companies must build multi-billion dollar infrastructure to keep up with the demand.
00:17:58.000And these companies are not paying for their own energy infrastructure.
00:18:03.000People's energy bills around the country are skyrocketing in order to pay for these AI data centers for them.
00:18:13.000Now, again, I am fine with the idea that if you're going to suck up an outsized share of the energy market, then maybe you ought to pay for the building of new energy facilities yourself and not be a burden on the collective.
00:18:29.000The reason AOC is not in favor of any of this stuff is because, like all the AI doomers, she doesn't actually know anything about AI or care anything about AI.
00:18:37.000I mean, here she was yesterday saying she doesn't even use AI.
00:18:40.000One of my favorite things about Democrats, honestly, it really is amazing, is they say that they should control things they don't even participate in.
00:18:46.000So you remember that Tim Walz, when he was running for vice president, you know, before he was the disgraced governor of Minnesota, who was unable to run for reelection because of fraud, you'll remember that Tim Walz did this routine where he said, I don't even own real estate.
00:20:57.000Again, as I say, I think a lot of these Democrats are dooming because the tech bros have been associated with President Trump.
00:21:02.000Until just a moment ago, Silicon Valley was beloved by all of these people.
00:21:07.000These were the forward-looking environmentalist, uber-cool people.
00:21:11.000And then it turns out the tech community actually wants a president who's not going to ban their business.
00:21:16.000Well, you know, that would be the reason why Democrats are now reacting negatively to so much tech.
00:21:21.000Again, I think some tech needs to be regulated, like social media for kids.
00:21:24.000When it comes to AI, listening to these people broaden out the general perspective, which is that the people who build tech companies are responsible for every use of the tech is totally, totally crazy.
00:21:35.000So things continue to percolate in Iran.
00:21:39.000Iran, right now, they appear to be suffering from a Passover disease, maybe a case of Pharaoh.
00:21:46.000God almost seems to be hardening their hearts.
00:21:48.000I have no other way to explain their current insane behavior.
00:21:52.000So President Trump has already offered the off-ramp, denuclearization, an end to large-scale building of ballistic missiles and drones, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, an end to offensive ballistic missile barrages.
00:22:06.000President Trump wants to get to the end of this.
00:22:09.000President Trump, according to the Wall Street Journal, has told associates in recent days he wants to avoid a protracted war in Iran, and he hopes to bring the conflict to an end in the coming weeks.
00:22:17.000Nearly one month into the war, the president has privately informed advisors he thinks the conflict is already in its final stages, and he's urged them to stick to the four to six week timeline he has outlined publicly, according to people familiar with the matter.
00:22:29.000Now, at the same time, according to the journal, President Trump has directed the military to keep pressure on Tehran.
00:22:34.000The Pentagon is deploying thousands of ground troops to the Middle East to give the president options.
00:22:39.000Once additional soldiers and Marines are in position, Trump could quickly order a targeted raid either inside Iran or on one of the islands along the southern coast.
00:22:47.000Now, again, this is a smart way to do negotiation because sure, if negotiations work, then we should do it.
00:22:54.000But if not, we got to press Iran still further, press them to the map.
00:22:57.000And as for all of the concerns about where the American people are on this, the American people, we like victory.
00:23:04.000It's a thing we, we don't like losing.
00:23:07.000Now, one of the things that's happening right now is this bizarre media-driven ADHD idea that the American people are sitting there on tensor hooks every single hour of every single day thinking, when is it over?
00:23:44.000We don't believe that if you're involved in military activity, you're not going to lose anybody.
00:23:49.000Because again, if necessary military activity can only be pursued at zero cost, there's no use in having a military.
00:23:56.000Literally, the point of a military is to do hard and dangerous things.
00:23:59.000That's why our military members are heroes.
00:24:01.000That's because they're willing to undertake that sacrifice for a greater good.
00:24:05.000That is literally why we uphold their valor and celebrate it.
00:24:10.000So the idea that Americans are sitting here and they're freaking out every single moment, that is not what the polls show.
00:24:16.000Some Americans are, but they were kind of generally against whatever President Trump does.
00:24:20.000Now, Iran, for its part, seems to be counting on this view of Americans that have been shared by pretty much all of our enemies at one time or another, that were weaklings, that were incapable of mobilizing for victory.
00:24:31.000Hitler famously thought that America was decadent and unstable.
00:24:35.000In one private conversation, according to sort of Hitler's notes, reportedly he said, quote, I don't see much future for the Americans.
00:24:59.000He actually said, quote, America's combat strategy is heavily dependent on the psychological aspect of war, which hides the cowardice and lack of fighting spirit of the American soldier.
00:25:10.000Now, America's enemies, again, this is a tactic during war.
00:25:13.000They're always seeking to undermine the home front morale.
00:25:39.000To outlast Americans typically requires not months, not weeks, years, because Americans are not nearly as stupid as our enemies think we are.
00:25:50.000Now, listen, there are serious questions to be asked about the war in Iran, particularly right now.
00:25:55.000People are looking at their 401ks right now, and they're saying it's down.
00:25:59.000They're looking at their stocks, their holdings.
00:26:03.000It would be foolish not to at least be thinking about it, not to be worried about it.
00:26:08.000And there are serious questions to be asked about whether we are going to have a sort of broader oil shock that spills over into a larger recession.
00:26:16.000Historian Neil Ferguson thinks that that's likely to happen.
00:26:19.000He wrote today, quote, were the Strait of Hormuz reopened to normal traffic.
00:26:22.000It would take between two and four weeks to bring this back online, with some estimates as high as two months.
00:26:27.000Thanks to Iranian drone strikes, Qatar's Ras Laugh and plant, the source of nearly one-fifth of the world's liquefied natural gas, LNG, has been shut since March 2nd.
00:26:35.000A missile strike has seriously damaged nearly a fifth of its capacity.
00:26:41.000He says, he's quoting another piece, quote, even if Donald Trump and Iran reached a deal to stop fighting tomorrow, it would thus be another four months before markets regain some semblance of normality.
00:26:50.000So he quotes an author named Tyler Goodspeed and Neil Ferguson.
00:27:02.000Often they increase interest rates because you have price inflation.
00:27:05.000But markets are forward-looking, as Neil Ferguson says.
00:27:09.000And I don't think there are that many people who believe it will take years for energy prices to come down again, unless Iran maintains control of the strait.
00:27:18.000Unless Iran maintains control of the strait.
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00:29:30.000The reality is that there is no way to extricate ourselves from this situation right now.
00:29:36.000There is no way to extricate ourselves from this situation by simply running away.
00:29:39.000That does not leave Iran in control of the Strait of Hormuz, which means $100 to $150 barrels of oil from here to forever.
00:29:48.000That is a point that was made by Larry Fink over at BlackRock, not a Fink fan, but he's right about this.
00:29:54.000If there's a cessation of war and yet Iran remains a threat, a threat to trade, a threat to the Straits of Hormouth, then I would argue that we could have years, years of above $100 closer to $150 oil.
00:30:12.000What happens to the glib economy if that happens?
00:30:20.000That's the point: it's not as though if things ended today, things would be better a month or two months or four months from now with Iran still in control of the Strait of Hormuz.
00:30:32.000And here's the thing: once we get to the end of this, if the Iranian regime falls, energy will become cheap again because the Strait of Hormuz will be free again.
00:30:39.000Not only that, you'll actually have American energy companies working with a friendly Iranian government to radically increase oil production.
00:30:47.000And because markets are forward-looking, the price of energy will then go down.
00:30:51.000Now, again, we're covering all the news here, folks.
00:30:53.000This is one reason you should subscribe over at dailywire.com.
00:31:15.000So here is where the Iranian intransigence is really kind of shocking, honestly, because they make it impossible for the United States not to push harder.
00:31:28.000If they continue to close the Strait of Hormuz, they are forcing the United States to do the thing.
00:31:33.000Now, I think maybe they're just misreading the room.
00:31:35.000They think that if they push hard enough, then President Trump will cave.
00:32:07.000So far, no negotiations have taken place.
00:32:11.000I should point out at this point, things are not going particularly well for the Iranians.
00:32:14.000How badly are things going for the Iranians?
00:32:16.000According to IRGC official Rakheim Nadali, they are now, I'm not even kidding, they are now lowering the draft age in Iran, the minimum age for joining the war, to 12.
00:32:45.000The regimes that are winning start drafting 12-year-olds.
00:32:48.000If all you knew about a war is that the United States had been reduced to drafting kids the age of my oldest daughter, like 12, would you think we were winning or that we were losing?
00:32:57.000I have to say that the media coverage of this war is so perverse and stupid.
00:33:04.000That the price of oil is higher in the middle of a war?
00:33:06.000Yeah, that's what happens in the middle of a war.
00:33:08.000Now, again, the Iranians are counting on the grievance party to save them.
00:33:13.000This is why the foreign minister, he is out there suggesting that President Trump was sold the war by outside nefarious forces and that he's selling the war to the public.
00:33:27.000But Iran does not have a lot of choices here.
00:33:30.000Iran is still insisting on its own terms.
00:33:33.000According to the Associated Press, quote, Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Iraqi, said in an interview on state TV that his government has not engaged in talks to end the war, and we do not plan on any negotiations.
00:33:47.000And that follows a report from Iranian State TV's English language broadcaster, Press TV, that quoted an official saying, quote, Iran rejected America's ceasefire proposal and has its own demands for an end to the fighting.
00:33:58.000Iran will end the war when it decides to do so and when its own conditions are met.
00:34:02.000And it attributed to the anonymous official an Iranian five-point proposal that included a halt to the killings of all of its officials, means to make sure that there is no future war waged against it, reparations we're supposed to pay them, the end of hostilities, and Iran's total exercise of sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, which is the, like, that can't be.
00:34:22.000If Iran is still in control of the Strait of Hormuz, then how exactly would that not be of massive benefit to the Iranian regime?
00:34:31.000The rest of the world could not sit still for that.
00:34:34.000But of course, President Trump has already announced that there have been certain concessions from Iran.
00:34:38.000He suggested yesterday that there was a big, beautiful prize that had been handed to him by Iran.
00:34:43.000It turns out that that is likely a few ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz unharassed.
00:34:48.000The Times of Israel reported that Iran had agreed to allow a number of fuel tankers not tied to the U.S. or Israel through the Strait of Hormuz in order to help calm global markets.
00:34:56.000Now, again, Iran publicly continues to maintain they're doing nothing to foster negotiations, and President Trump says privately they're negotiating.
00:35:03.000I think that if they want to play chicken, they have picked the wrong guy to play chicken with.
00:35:08.000Here was Caroline Levitt at the White House yesterday.
00:35:10.000President Trump does not bluff, and he is prepared to unleash hell.
00:35:17.000Their last miscalculation cost them their senior leadership, their Navy, their Air Force, and their air defense system.
00:35:24.000Any violence beyond this point will be because the Iranian regime refused to understand they have already been defeated and refused to come to a deal.
00:35:34.000President Trump put out a statement on Truth Social: The Iranian negotiators are very different and strange.
00:35:40.000They are begging us to make a deal, which they should be doing since they have been militarily obliterated with zero chance of a comeback, and yet they publicly state they are only looking at our proposal.
00:35:57.000Well, President Trump is also pointing out that it's hard to find leadership over there, mainly because every time a new leader is appointed, that leader is dead within 48 hours.
00:36:09.000Seen anything like we're doing in the Middle East with Iran?
00:36:13.000And they are negotiating, by the way, and they want to make a deal so badly, but they're afraid to say it because they figure they'll be killed by their own people.
00:36:22.000They're also afraid they'll be killed by us.
00:36:25.000There's never been a head of a country that wanted that job less than being the head of Iran.
00:36:33.000Now, again, he is not wrong about that.
00:36:34.000Last night, Israel apparently killed the Iranian officials responsible for closing the Strait of Hormuz itself.
00:36:40.000The Times of Israel reports: quote, Defense Minister Israel Katz says the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, Ali Reza Tangsiri, was killed in an Israeli strike.
00:36:50.000He said, quote, the IDF eliminated the commander of the IRGC Navy, the person directly responsible for the terror operation of mining and blocking the Strait of Hormuz to maritime traffic.
00:37:08.000The Iranians are already trying to threaten President Trump out of such a move.
00:37:11.000Mohammed Khalibaf, that's the guy who supposedly we're negotiating with, the supposed moderate in Iran, who, you know, is friends with the IRGC, who blows away 30,000 Iranians last month or two months ago.
00:37:22.000He said yesterday there would be hell to pay if Harg Island, again, that's the small island that houses 90% of Iranian oil capacity for export, if it were attacked.
00:37:31.000So he threatened relentless attacks if Kharg were attacked.
00:37:34.000He said, our forces are monitoring all enemy movements.
00:37:37.000If they take any step, all the vital infrastructure of that regional country will be targeted with relentless, unceasing attacks.
00:37:42.000That's actually fascinating because it sounds as though he is concerned that UAE or Saudi is actually going to attack Kharg Island.
00:37:52.000He says the infrastructure of that regional country, right?
00:37:54.000He's not talking about the United States there, which, as we'll get to in a moment, it's possible.
00:37:59.000America's Arab allies are not in favor of us leaving Iran's government in place.
00:38:04.000This is like their worst fear: that Iran's government is left in place to sort of restock.
00:38:09.000According to CNN, Iran has been building up defenses of Kharg Island in order to protect against a potential U.S. ground assault.
00:38:18.000According to CNN, quote, Iran has been laying traps and moving additional military personnel and air defenses to Kharg Island in recent weeks in preparation for a possible U.S. operation to take control of the island, according to multiple people familiar with U.S. intelligence reporting on the issue.
00:38:32.000But U.S. officials and military experts say there would be significant risks involved in a ground operation, including a large number of U.S. casualties.
00:38:40.000The Iranians have moved additional shoulder-fired surface-to-air guided missile systems known as man pads there, as well as anti-personnel and anti-armor mines around the island and on the shoreline where troops would make an amphibious landing.
00:38:51.000Now, again, I would assume that our military planners have thought of this.
00:38:55.000We are constantly hearing about the magical defense capabilities of the Iranians.
00:38:58.000And so far, the magical defense capabilities of the Iranians appear to be putting their bodies in the way of American bombs.
00:39:06.000And our Arab allies are getting antsy.
00:39:08.000They're becoming more clear in their support for open military action.
00:39:13.000In fact, six Arab states put out a statement, again, condemning the Iranian attacks.
00:39:20.000The UAE ambassador to the United States wrote in the Wall Street Journal: More needs to be done to remove the missile and drone threats.
00:39:28.000We are ready to join an international initiative to reopen this trade and keep it open.
00:39:32.000We aren't asking the U.S. to carry the full burden.
00:39:34.000We're defending our people, protecting regional stability and global prosperity, and demonstrating that real alliances are built on cooperation and contribution, not dependency.
00:40:14.000As I've said repeatedly, I think the president obviously believes the United States wants to have someone in leadership position in the Iranian regime that will be much more favorable, that will be willing to work with the United States, that will no longer chant death to America.
00:40:36.000And that is the reason why probably they're stuck between Iraq and a hard place.
00:40:39.000See, here's the thing: if they cut a deal with the United States that ends with them out of control of the Strait of Hormuz, under the continued overwatch of Israel and our Arab allies, like UAE and Saudi, excise from the world economy, it is only a matter of time until they collapse.
00:40:54.000One U.S. dollar is currently trading for 1.3 million Iranian reals.
00:41:00.000Their currency is absolutely worthless, totally worthless.
00:41:04.000By the way, that was even before the war.
00:41:07.000The real back in December was trading at $42,000 to the dollar.
00:41:12.000That was a fake number, by the way, because Iran's real is totally worthless.
00:41:15.000So basically, the Iranian government restricted its own citizens from actually being able to buy things from abroad.
00:41:21.000And that created a black market for American dollars, in which one American dollar was already going for close to a million Iranian reals.
00:41:30.000And then the Iranian government was unable to uphold its nonsense, fake levels of value on its real.
00:41:40.000And so in January, it completely collapsed.
00:41:54.000So here's the thing that's kind of amazing here.
00:41:56.000People are acting as the time is not on America's side because of the public's paying threshold for gas that has increased in price over the last three weeks.
00:42:06.000If we can't outlast the Iranians, who again have no economy and no military and no real forward capacity other than firing a few drones at our allies and trying to harass shipping, if we can't outlast them, that is not about Iran being strong.
00:42:24.000That is about our own political weakness.
00:42:26.000This, by the way, is why President Trump keeps saying we're not in the middle of a war.
00:42:29.000We're in the middle of a military operation.
00:42:33.000A war usually involves your opponent killing large numbers of your soldiers and doing you serious damage, not just randomly throwing bricks at your friends, which is basically what Iran has been relegated to.
00:44:13.000And the reality is, of course, that President Trump is doing this for young Americans.
00:44:17.000Can you imagine a world in which Iran is not threatening all of its neighbors and exporting terrorism and building ballistic missiles and nuclear weaponry?
00:44:24.000Can you imagine a world in which the axis of Russia, Iran, China is broken?
00:44:29.000Can you imagine free flow, open flow of trade via the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea?
00:44:36.000The possibility of investing in moderate regimes all throughout the Gulf and those regimes investing their money in the United States?
00:44:49.000It is the biggest foreign policy victory in modern American history.
00:44:53.000If President Trump is able to effectuate regime change behavior or regime change itself, here is Caroline Lovitt explaining yesterday.
00:45:02.000President Trump is doing this for you.
00:45:03.000He's doing this for young people so that we are no longer threatened by a rogue terrorist regime in the Middle East that seeks to kill the brave men and women who serve in our country in the Middle East, many of them young people themselves, young men and women who serve this country honorably in uniform and have been threatened, killed, and maimed by the rogue Iranian terrorist regime.
00:45:25.000Okay, so the responses from the idiotic left and the grievance party right and foreign sympathizers with Iran continues to be astonishing.
00:45:32.000Ruben Gallego immediately said, The best thing you can do for young people is not send them to die in a stupid war.
00:45:38.000Okay, can we stop treating American soldiers as though they are somehow pawns, as though they are victims?
00:45:47.000We do not have a draft in the United States.
00:45:50.000President Trump is quote unquote, he's not sending American troops to die in the Middle East.
00:45:56.000Again, this has been the most successful military operation in terms of damage done to America and damage inflicted upon our opponents in American history.
00:46:05.000The American military is 2 million people strong.
00:46:09.000The notion that President Trump is sending people to die in a war for no reason, that every war is Vietnam or Iraq or something, is just, it's nonsense.
00:46:20.000Well, speaking of stupid people, the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, who finds sympathy for terrorist groups throughout the Middle East and also, of course, in Iran, he's saying that he's like the Pope, which, again, the Pope is not a political leader.
00:46:35.000He is a spiritual and religious leader.
00:46:37.000And so when the Pope says he doesn't like conflict and that everybody should be peaceful, that is a different thing than you, an elected political leader with a military at your disposal, coming down on the side of the Iranians.
00:46:58.000Again, he's comparing himself to the Pope.
00:47:00.000I mean, my dude, just going to say no on that.
00:47:29.000Regardless of what Iran is saying about whether the president's spoken to them or not, I don't trust the feedback of President Trump.
00:47:35.000I really don't trust Iran either because the kind of regimes over there, they send out propaganda, they manipulate numbers of what's happening.
00:47:50.000Yeah, we're just like the Iranians, according to these geniuses.
00:47:54.000Meanwhile, Joe Kent continues to run around saying silly, silly, and terrible things about not only the Middle East, but about the murder of Charlie Kirk.
00:48:02.000He's actually slated to appear with, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it.
00:48:09.000The horseshoe's coming all the way around.
00:48:10.000Again, Joe Kent is indistinguishable from Hassan Piker, who is indistinguishable from Tucker Carlson, who is indistinguishable from Chenk Uyghur, and all of them are indistinguishable from Howard, Dean and Noam Chomsky at this point.
00:48:22.000Caroline Lovitt slapped at Joe Kent yesterday, and she is right to do so.
00:48:27.000I think the president and I have both strongly responded to the criticism by Mr. Kent, who unfortunately resigned in disgrace and accused the president of basically being controlled by foreign countries and foreign manipulation, which is a ridiculous and laughable assertion.
00:48:44.000So his accusations have zero credibility as far as this White House is concerned.
00:49:10.000He worked for NCTC, which is not a law enforcement or investigative agency.
00:49:15.000He had zero role or 1811 investigative authority in this.
00:49:18.000This is like me saying I was blocked from playing receiver for the commanders.
00:49:22.000It's an issue of having no business or, frankly, ability doing something, not an issue of access.
00:49:26.000Kent said that he was blocked from investigating.
00:49:28.000Furthermore, FBI actually made an early exception and allowed NCTC to assess intelligence reports and international terrorism returned zero connections.
00:49:37.000Anyway, the shameless media tour he's on reeks of being desperate for attention and the baseless conspiracy theories he's spreading around the administration, particularly Charlie's murder, could very well make it more difficult to get justice for our friend.
00:49:48.000If he had any shame, Joe Kent should be ashamed of himself.
00:50:53.000Well, I mean, one of the things about romance very often is the obsession with the taboo.
00:51:00.000So in a world in which sex outside marriage was the taboo, then the idea was the way you solve for that is the people fall in love and then they get married and then the taboo becomes acceptable.
00:51:10.000This is why all comedies in Shakespeare's era ended with marriage at the end, right?
00:51:14.000The tension has to be resolved in a marriage.
00:51:17.000And then we decided that sex outside of marriage was totally normal.
00:51:20.000And so you had to find the next taboo.
00:52:00.000Scott says, should we be concerned about our allies' nuclear capabilities as they begin to fall to foreigners with Islamist ideologies like England?
00:52:08.000Yeah, of course we should be worried about that.
00:53:22.000It is not predominantly a materialistic thing.
00:53:25.000All righty, folks, coming up, we'll answer some more of your questions in the vaunted mailbag.
00:53:30.000Remember, as always, if you want your question to be answered, if you wish to hang out with us, if you wish to see all of our magical paywall content, you need to actually go become a member.