The Ben Shapiro Show - March 03, 2026


We Are Winning


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 7 minutes

Words per Minute

189.53133

Word Count

12,806

Sentence Count

827


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The United States is winning.
00:00:02.000 It is winning in Iran.
00:00:03.000 Anyone who is telling you differently is either ignorant or lying.
00:00:06.000 And the people who are lying to you, they want America to lose, period.
00:00:11.000 And Iran is counting on these people.
00:00:13.000 They're counting on the lying left, the people who despise President Trump.
00:00:17.000 Those would be the Democrats, their legacy media allies.
00:00:20.000 They're also counting in Iran on the horseshoe right, who believe that we're losing just by destroying the Iranian regime.
00:00:26.000 These people believe that a weaker America on the world stage is inherently good.
00:00:29.000 Many of them just despise Israel.
00:00:31.000 Many of these people also know they can make a ton of money by grifting and telling you they've uncovered a great mysterious conspiracy and only they can protect you from it.
00:00:39.000 But the only way they can maintain that line is if the United States loses.
00:00:43.000 I'll tell you who all these people are in just a little while.
00:00:46.000 Not the people who are asking real questions, real questions, skepticism.
00:00:49.000 That's all fine.
00:00:50.000 That's great.
00:00:51.000 Because real questions have real answers and people deserve real answers.
00:00:54.000 But the first answer is that we are winning.
00:00:57.000 The United States is winning because we have defenestrated the top levels of the Iranian regime.
00:01:02.000 We have cracked it right down the middle because we have dismantled their ballistic missile capacity almost entirely, because we are wrecking their nuclear infrastructure, because we are reducing their entire regime to rubble.
00:01:14.000 And that's because President Trump was brave enough, courageous enough to keep a promise we've been making to our own citizens for nearly 50 years when no other president would.
00:01:23.000 That is not losing, that is winning.
00:01:25.000 And anyone who is telling you differently is lying to you or ignorant.
00:01:28.000 And there was news just this morning that Israeli operations struck the parliament building where Iran was selecting a new successor, destroying a wide swath of the next layer of the Iranian government.
00:01:40.000 Meanwhile, the United States dropping heavy airstrikes on pretty much every IRGC facility that they can find.
00:01:46.000 The ballistic missiles that Iran was building and that it was attempting to deploy being wiped out at very, very low cost to the United States in terms of actual casualties.
00:01:56.000 Of course, every casualty is a tragedy.
00:01:58.000 We wish that we could lose zero soldiers in the middle of a war.
00:02:02.000 But it is worth noting that war over time has gotten significantly less deadly for Americans, the cost of war.
00:02:08.000 Nate Silver, who is certainly no proponent of the president of the United States, put out this chart over the course of the evening last evening, pointing out how few deaths America currently suffers when it comes to its modern wars.
00:02:22.000 The Gulf War, we lost 294 soldiers.
00:02:24.000 The war in Afghanistan, 2,300.
00:02:26.000 The Iraq War, 4,500.
00:02:28.000 Operation Inherent Resolve, which was the operation to take out ISIS, 120.
00:02:33.000 And to date, the United States has lost six soldiers in the current Operation Epic Fury.
00:02:39.000 Okay, what does that mean?
00:02:40.000 Well, it means that the United States is really, really, really good at this.
00:02:44.000 And we are demonstrating that we are incredible at this.
00:02:47.000 This is not 1968.
00:02:49.000 It is not Vietnam.
00:02:50.000 It is not thousands of American bodybags coming home or hundreds or even at this point, thank God, dozens, which in light of the scale of this operation is not only unbelievable and remarkable, it is a testament to America's overwhelming power and the weakness of Iran's defenses, which is why this was the unique opportunity to go.
00:03:08.000 There was a unique opportunity to go.
00:03:10.000 The situation was not going to be the same one year from now, as we'll get into.
00:03:15.000 And this is not going to turn into some Vietnam-like quagmire.
00:03:18.000 I understand people asking questions, but this is not going to become Vietnam.
00:03:21.000 Here's the vice president of the United States, JD Vance, who is no interventionist, saying so.
00:03:27.000 If you think back to Afghanistan, 20 years of mission creep, 20 years of not having a clear objective, and 20 years of the United States trying to bring liberal democracy to Afghanistan.
00:03:37.000 Iraq was a little bit shorter, but we were still in that country for nearly a decade with no clear mission, no clear definition.
00:03:44.000 What's so different about this, Jesse, is that the president has clearly defined what he wants to accomplish.
00:03:49.000 And there's just no way, I said this before the conflict started.
00:03:52.000 I'll repeat it again.
00:03:54.000 There's just no way that Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multi-year conflict with no clear end in sight and no clear objective.
00:04:02.000 What is different about President Trump, and it's frankly different about both Republicans and Democrats of the past, is that he's not going to let his country go to war unless there's a clearly defined objective.
00:04:12.000 He's defined that objective as Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and has to commit long-term to never trying to rebuild their nuclear capability.
00:04:20.000 It's pretty clear.
00:04:21.000 It's pretty simple.
00:04:22.000 And I think that means that we're not going to get into the problems that we've had with Iraq and Afghanistan.
00:04:28.000 And we are just at the beginning.
00:04:29.000 Remember, we are in about day three and a half of this war.
00:04:33.000 More is coming.
00:04:34.000 Far more, far more victory is coming.
00:04:37.000 We'll get to that in just one second.
00:04:38.000 First, remember, if you're not a Daily Wire Plus member, you should do that right now.
00:04:41.000 We're bringing live coverage around the clock on everything that is happening.
00:04:44.000 Head on over to dailywire.com.
00:04:46.000 Your subscriptions allow us to continue to do business and to bring you the material that you want.
00:04:51.000 Okay, so here is the deal.
00:04:52.000 Marco Rubio, he was warning.
00:04:55.000 There are harder hits coming.
00:04:56.000 Again, those harder hits are already coming as of this morning.
00:05:00.000 The Israeli Air Force on Tuesday struck the building housing Iran's council of experts in the holy city of Qom, disrupting the process of picking a new Supreme Leader.
00:05:08.000 So they killed the old Supreme Leader, and now they're killing the people selecting the new Supreme Leader.
00:05:12.000 The destabilization inside the Iranian government is severe and much, much more is coming.
00:05:18.000 Here's the Secretary of State yesterday.
00:05:21.000 Again, I'm not going to give away the details of our tactical efforts, but the hardest hits are yet to come from the U.S. military.
00:05:27.000 The next phase will be even more punishing on Iran than it is right now.
00:05:30.000 Someone was screaming, how long will it take?
00:05:32.000 I don't know how long it'll take.
00:05:33.000 We have objectives.
00:05:34.000 We will do this as long as it takes to achieve those objectives, and we will achieve those objectives.
00:05:38.000 The world will be a safer place when we're done with this operation.
00:05:43.000 And again, the Vice President JD Vance, who had told the president, according to the New York Times, either go big or go home.
00:05:48.000 No pinprick strikes, either do it or don't do it.
00:05:50.000 He says that America's objectives are clear.
00:05:53.000 Our capabilities are massive.
00:05:55.000 Here was the vice president last night on Fox News.
00:05:58.000 But there's also been a lot of conversation about what are our capabilities.
00:06:02.000 And look, I know this stuff.
00:06:03.000 Obviously, I'm not going to reveal classified information here on air, but the president of the United States knows what we're able to do.
00:06:10.000 He knows that we have much greater capacity to inflict damage on the Iranian nuclear program, but also on various missiles that threaten our troops.
00:06:19.000 As you've seen, they've been launching those at our troops for much of the past three days.
00:06:23.000 So I think the president has made it very clear that the United States has a lot of optionality here.
00:06:28.000 And, you know, we could go for a little bit longer.
00:06:30.000 We could go for a lot longer, but I think the president just wants to make it clear to the Iranians and to the world that he is not going to rest until he accomplishes that all-important objective of ensuring that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon, not just for the next few years, not just because we obliterated Fordeau or some other enrichment facility, but because the Iranians themselves commit long-term to not building a nuclear weapon.
00:06:54.000 So here's the question: What exactly is Iran going to do about all this?
00:06:59.000 They are getting absolutely destroyed.
00:07:01.000 The Iranian government is being absolutely destroyed like right now.
00:07:05.000 The Israeli Air Force has flown something like 1,200 sorties over Iran in three days with zero combat losses.
00:07:11.000 The United States has flown far more than that with zero losses in theater, right?
00:07:15.000 So we had losses because there was a missile that fell in Kuwait.
00:07:18.000 That's where all the casualties came from.
00:07:20.000 The United States has lost no materiel over Iran.
00:07:23.000 So what will the Iranian government do?
00:07:27.000 What will the Ayatollahs do?
00:07:28.000 Well, they have one play and one play only, one play, and that is they are counting on the Kuk coalition.
00:07:34.000 They are counting on the lying left in the United States and the horseshoe right to undermine the United States and Israel right here.
00:07:41.000 That is the entire game.
00:07:42.000 That's the entire game.
00:07:44.000 Try to withdraw domestic support for the operation.
00:07:47.000 Now, again, that's nothing new.
00:07:49.000 That's not just a thing that's happening right now and it's unique and this is some sort of crazy claim.
00:07:53.000 Our military enemies always invariably count on their useful allies and useful idiots to push their agenda.
00:08:00.000 The Germans in the lead up to World War II counted on the American boond and they celebrated as the Lindbergh right gained credibility in the United States.
00:08:08.000 They deployed Lord Hawha against the Brits.
00:08:10.000 The Japanese activated Tokyo Rose to undermine American combat morale during World War II.
00:08:15.000 The Viet Cong, who lost on the battlefield, counted on the American legacy media to convince Americans to abandon our victories in Vietnam.
00:08:23.000 The KGB, the NKVD before that, they routinely utilized idiots in the United States to spread their propaganda, going all the way back to the New York Times in the early part of the 1930s with Walter Duranti.
00:08:35.000 Even Baghdad Bob tried to tell the American public everything was fine in Iraq while Saddam Hussein was falling.
00:08:41.000 Bizarre confluence of the lying left, Democrats who protest that we're not winning, that we can't possibly win, there's no way we can win, and the horseshoe right, conspiracy theorists, morons, isolationists, anti-American devotees of Bernie Sanders' foreign policy.
00:08:55.000 That's the stuff the Ayatollahs are counting on.
00:08:57.000 It's what the remainder of the Iranian government is counting on.
00:09:00.000 And you can tell because they are clearly, clearly messaging directly to them.
00:09:04.000 So Abbas Iraqi, who is the foreign minister in Iran, is directing tweets in English directly at these people.
00:09:11.000 That is his goal.
00:09:12.000 He is counting on, again, the lying left and the horseshoe right to save him.
00:09:16.000 That is the entire strategy at this point.
00:09:18.000 They got no military strategy.
00:09:19.000 They have nothing, nothing.
00:09:22.000 They're firing the odd drone at Qatar and Cyprus in the vain hopes that countries are going to talk President Trump into ending the operation before the defenestration of the Iranian government.
00:09:33.000 So Iraqi put out a tweet: quote, Mr. Rubio admitted what we all knew.
00:09:36.000 U.S. has entered a war of choice on behalf of Israel.
00:09:39.000 There was never any so-called Iranian threat.
00:09:41.000 Shedding of both American and Iranian blood is thus on Israel.
00:09:44.000 Firsters, American people deserve better and should take back their country.
00:09:49.000 And so we'll get to what Rubio said yesterday because it's being taken out of context and what he is saying is a lie.
00:09:53.000 But basically, Iraqi is making three arguments.
00:09:55.000 This is the argument of the Mullahs.
00:09:56.000 First, Iran was never a threat.
00:09:58.000 Everything was fine.
00:09:59.000 They could have been our allies.
00:10:01.000 In fact, they could have been our best friends.
00:10:02.000 Second, Iran was negotiating, and the United States out of peak and because it was manipulated by the evil Udin cut it short.
00:10:09.000 And third, and finally, only the Jews, and particularly the Israelis, cucked America into doing this.
00:10:15.000 So let's go through each one of those claims one by one, because it turns out all three are horse.
00:10:20.000 First, the claim that Iran was not a threat.
00:10:22.000 That is a lie.
00:10:23.000 It is a lie.
00:10:24.000 Not only was Iran building up its ballistic missile facilities, not only did it have a wide variety of short-range missiles, not only was it developing nuclear weapons, it was doing all of those things and spreading terrorism throughout the region.
00:10:36.000 The urgency was because Iran was building underground facilities designed to withstand bombing.
00:10:41.000 The window of opportunity, in other words, was closing.
00:10:43.000 Again, this is the vice president.
00:10:45.000 The vice president is not an interventionist.
00:10:47.000 The vice president is one of the biggest non-interventionists, one of the biggest isolationist-leaning voices in the administration.
00:10:53.000 Here he was on Fox News last night, pointing out that what Iran was doing did not pass the smell test.
00:10:59.000 But the Iranians would come back to us, Jesse, and they'd say, well, having enrichment for civilian purposes, for energy purposes, is a matter of national pride.
00:11:08.000 And so we would say, okay, that's interesting.
00:11:10.000 But why are you building your enrichment facilities 70 feet underground?
00:11:15.000 And why are you enriching to a level that's way beyond civilian enrichment and is only useful if your goal is to build a nuclear bomb?
00:11:23.000 Nobody objects to the Iranians being able to build medical isotopes.
00:11:28.000 The objection is these enrichment facilities that are only useful for building a nuclear weapon.
00:11:34.000 Even some international organizations that usually don't agree with the United States were very clear that Iran's only purpose in building these underground, highly enriched facilities was to build a nuclear weapon.
00:11:46.000 It just doesn't pass the smell test for you to say that you want enrichment for like medical isotopes while at the same time trying to build a facility 70, 80 feet underground.
00:11:58.000 And we'll discuss in a moment what the United States was offering because basically the U.S. was saying, you want medical isotopes, you can make that happen for you, just give up the nukes.
00:12:04.000 And they were saying no.
00:12:05.000 Meanwhile, Secretary of State Rubio was pointing out quite correctly that the Ayatollahs are radical clerics.
00:12:11.000 This idea that they are making smart strategic decisions.
00:12:13.000 If they had made a smart strategic decision, they would have given up their nuclear program years ago and been reintegrated into the world economy, which wants their oil and natural gas.
00:12:21.000 They didn't do any of that stuff.
00:12:24.000 The Ayatollah is a radical, was a radical cleric.
00:12:28.000 That entire regime is led by radical clerics who don't make geopolitical decisions.
00:12:33.000 They make decisions on the basis of theology, their view of theology, which is an apocalyptic one.
00:12:38.000 That has to be taken very seriously as well.
00:12:41.000 So that was the purpose for what this operation is all about.
00:12:44.000 That's what it's focused on.
00:12:45.000 As the president said earlier today, it is on or ahead of schedule.
00:12:48.000 I will defer to the Department of War to discuss the progress being made at a tactical level, but it was the right decision and an important decision for the safety and security of the world.
00:12:59.000 And here was Steve Witkoff, the guy who's trying to negotiate with Iran.
00:13:05.000 They have 10,000 roughly kilograms of fissionable material.
00:13:10.000 That's broken up into roughly 460 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium, another 1,000 kilograms of 20% enriched uranium, and the balance is at 3.67.
00:13:23.000 They manufacture their own centrifuges to enrich this material.
00:13:29.000 So there's almost no stopping them.
00:13:31.000 They have an endless supply of it.
00:13:33.000 The 60% material, Sean, can be brought to 90%.
00:13:39.000 That's weapon grade, weapons grade, in roughly one week, maybe 10 days at the outside.
00:13:45.000 The 20% can be brought to weapons grade inside of three to four weeks.
00:13:51.000 And let me say this because I forgot this small little detail.
00:13:55.000 In that first meeting, both the Iranian negotiators said to us directly, with no shame, that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60%, and they're aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs.
00:14:12.000 And that was the beginning of their negotiating stance.
00:14:18.000 And by the way, again, that is leaving aside the ballistic missile development, the short-range missile development.
00:14:22.000 It's leaving aside the support for terrorist groups and all the rest.
00:14:24.000 This idea that Iran was not a threat and was not becoming a deeper threat by hardening its sources, that's idiocy.
00:14:31.000 It's idiocy.
00:14:33.000 Then there's the lie that Iran was negotiating in good faith.
00:14:36.000 This is put forward by some members of the international community, the UN, the French, all the rest of the world wimps.
00:14:45.000 Steve Witkoff was the man in the room.
00:14:47.000 Here he was explaining his original offer, which is a pretty good offer for the Iranians if they didn't want to go nuclear.
00:14:54.000 You got to a point where you were discussing enriched uranium at much very low levels for civilian purposes, although I don't think they really need it because they have all the energy they'd ever want.
00:15:05.000 But did that come up?
00:15:07.000 Was that offer made to them?
00:15:12.000 We discussed with them 10 years of no enrichment whatsoever, and we would pay for the fuel.
00:15:18.000 And it was flatly rejected.
00:15:20.000 And the president said this in there to have a good faith negotiation.
00:15:24.000 Pardon me?
00:15:26.000 He's saying that we would give it to them and they rejected it.
00:15:30.000 We actually had that and they rejected that, which told us at that very moment that they had no notion of doing anything other than retaining enrichment for the purpose of weaponizing.
00:15:44.000 And then there is Iran's third claim, which is that the Jews did it, that it was the Jews who manipulated President Trump into war, which is a hell of a take.
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00:17:11.000 Okay, so then there's the third claim.
00:17:13.000 The third claim is the one that, of course, is directed at the podcast, bros, and gals, the class of grifters we'll get to in a moment, who are eager to lap up Iranian propaganda for the clicks and for the money.
00:17:25.000 And because, of course, it is worthwhile for them to take a position against the administration, not out of some sort of honest disagreement, but because they actually are perfectly willing to watch Iran go nuclear.
00:17:37.000 Okay, so the argument that is trained on this group is it was the Jews, right?
00:17:41.000 That is the argument that Iran is trying now.
00:17:43.000 So they're trying the Jews cucked America.
00:17:46.000 It was really that various Jewish sources were calling up President.
00:17:49.000 Trump isn't responsible for any of his own decisions.
00:17:51.000 That really it was, in the end, just the Jews.
00:17:55.000 It was the Israelis, somehow Bibi Netanyahu worked his secret magic, and that's what President Trump did here.
00:18:00.000 Okay, the reason that this gained a little steam yesterday was because Marco Rubio was talking about why now.
00:18:06.000 Like, why did the United States decide to do this right now?
00:18:09.000 And here's what Secretary of State Rubio had to say: Why now?
00:18:12.000 Well, there's two reasons why now.
00:18:14.000 The first is it was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone, the United States or Israel or anyone, they were going to respond and respond against the United States.
00:18:24.000 The orders had been delegated down to the field commanders.
00:18:27.000 It was automatic.
00:18:28.000 And in fact, it bear to be true because, in fact, within an hour of the initial attack on the leadership compound, the missile forces in the South and in the North for that matter had already been activated to launch.
00:18:41.000 In fact, those had already been pre-positioned.
00:18:44.000 The third is the assessment that was made that if we stood and waited for that attack to come first before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties.
00:18:53.000 And so the president made the very wise decision.
00:18:56.000 We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action.
00:18:58.000 We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces.
00:19:01.000 And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed.
00:19:11.000 Okay, so those last two sentences are being taken out of context by people who apparently didn't watch the rest of the press conference and/or are being totally dishonest with you to suggest that actually what happened here is that Israel entered into a war of choice or was going to, and that they were going to drag the United States into war because Iran would retaliate against U.S. bases.
00:19:29.000 And therefore, they basically stronged arm, the Israeli government strong-armed President Trump into joining.
00:19:35.000 Well, fortunately for us, we have tape of the Secretary of State expressly rejecting this idiotic suggestion in the same press conference that, of course, got many, many fewer clicks on the X machine, which is an algorithmic disaster.
00:19:47.000 Here was Secretary of State Rubio being asked whether, in fact, Israel strong-armed the United States into this.
00:19:52.000 And here he was saying, no, that's stupid.
00:19:56.000 The U.S. was forced to strike because of an impending Israeli action.
00:20:00.000 No, first of all, I mean, two things I would say.
00:20:02.000 Number one is no matter what, ultimately, this operation needed to happen.
00:20:04.000 That's the question of why now.
00:20:06.000 But this operation needed to happen because Iran, in about a year or a year and a half, would cross the line of immunity, meaning they would have so many short-range missiles, so many drones, that no one could do anything about it because they could hold the whole world hostage.
00:20:18.000 Look at the damage they're doing now.
00:20:20.000 And this is a weekend, Iran.
00:20:22.000 Imagine a year from now.
00:20:23.000 So that had to happen.
00:20:24.000 Obviously, we were aware of Israeli intentions and understood what that would mean for us, and we had to be prepared to act as a result of it.
00:20:30.000 But this had to happen no matter what.
00:20:33.000 I mean, in other words, one year from now, nobody could do anything.
00:20:36.000 The window was closing for action.
00:20:38.000 Israel would have had to act because they had no choice.
00:20:40.000 So I'm not even sure I understand the counter suggestion.
00:20:43.000 Israel was supposed to wait for some reason.
00:20:47.000 What was Israel supposed to do?
00:20:48.000 Wait until they became a powerhouse again with the capacity to shoot down planes and to harden its facilities against an attack.
00:20:55.000 And the United States should have waited also.
00:20:57.000 Again, the deliberate attempt to take the last two sentences of the first clip out of context to suggest that basically America was strong-armed into this is such abject horsesh.
00:21:06.000 Marco Rubio is dismissing it.
00:21:08.000 The president of the United States is not going to be strong-armed by anybody.
00:21:10.000 Have you ever met Donald Trump?
00:21:11.000 Have you ever spent time watching Donald Trump?
00:21:13.000 He's been the president, effectively speaking, for kind of three terms, right?
00:21:17.000 He wasn't president during the Biden years, but we were watching him pretty closely.
00:21:20.000 He was kind of a major figure.
00:21:22.000 This notion that we hit Iran because of vibes or because Mark Levin or Miriam Adelson or I asked the president really, really, really nicely to hit Iran is such nonsense.
00:21:34.000 It's just nonsense.
00:21:35.000 By the way, I should just mention, I have never asked the president for anything.
00:21:39.000 He is the president of the United States.
00:21:41.000 He's the one making the call.
00:21:43.000 And the reality is this, you don't hit a regime like Iran's after they develop all their capacities.
00:21:49.000 That's stupidity.
00:21:50.000 Why would you wait for a year until they harden everything, including their nuclear facilities, to do anything?
00:21:56.000 We did this crap with North Korea, you will recall.
00:21:58.000 North Korea, we kept dealing with them and dealing with them and dealing with them.
00:22:00.000 Then boom, they explode a nuclear weapon and now they're basically ensconced there forever.
00:22:05.000 That is not when you fail to act.
00:22:08.000 You act when you have the opportunity, of course.
00:22:12.000 Now, the Iranians, as I say, are counting on a bunch of people to pick up their narrative nonsense and start promoting it.
00:22:19.000 So on the lying left, you have, for example, Senator Tim Kaine.
00:22:23.000 Now, I know you all forgot about Tim Kaine.
00:22:25.000 He was the guy who ran with Hillary Clinton for vice president, and now you don't remember his name because irrelevant.
00:22:29.000 Well, he writes in the Wall Street Journal, quote, the American people don't want to be dragged into another forever war under false pretenses.
00:22:36.000 The U.S. and Iran have both constructed narratives whereby the other is the aggressor in this long-standing conflict.
00:22:40.000 More war isn't the answer.
00:22:42.000 So first of all, the unbelievable moral equivalence between a terrorist regime that is responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of Americans, and that has spread terrorism all over the world and the United States is laughably terrible, like morally, morally imbecilic.
00:22:59.000 And then Kane goes on to tell lies about how great the Obama deal was.
00:23:02.000 You know, the one that was great for the Mullahs, where he shipped them pallets of cash in exchange for pretty much nothing and a clear pathway to a bomb.
00:23:09.000 And finally, Tim Kaine concludes the best solution is to let the Ayatollah spread terror, build ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons and shoot protesters in the streets.
00:23:16.000 He says, quote, our troops deserve better than to be sent into a war by a president who promised to end wars.
00:23:22.000 Iranian citizens deserve better than their mistreatment by their own regime and the death of civilians, including school children, at the hands of U.S. and Israeli aerial bombardment.
00:23:29.000 Excuse me.
00:23:30.000 So he's saying that the Iranians deserve better.
00:23:33.000 What, to live under the heavy hand of the Iranian government?
00:23:37.000 So, yes, he cares so much about the Iranians that they should be shot by the tens of thousands in the streets.
00:23:41.000 That's his case, Tim Kaine.
00:23:43.000 What a dolt.
00:23:44.000 What a true dolt.
00:23:45.000 Thank God that guy was never vice president of the United States.
00:23:48.000 And as for the notion that President Trump never spelled out the goals, here's President Trump spelling out the goals.
00:23:55.000 Our objectives are clear.
00:23:56.000 First, we're destroying Iran's missile capabilities, and you see that happening on an hourly basis, and their capacity to produce brand new ones, and pretty good ones they make.
00:24:09.000 Second, we're annihilating their Navy.
00:24:12.000 We've knocked out already 10 ships.
00:24:15.000 They're at the bottom of the sea.
00:24:16.000 Third, we're ensuring that the world's number one sponsor of terror can never obtain a nuclear weapon, never going to have a nuclear weapon.
00:24:26.000 I said that from the beginning.
00:24:27.000 They're never going to have a nuclear weapon.
00:24:29.000 They were on the road to getting one legitimately through a deal that was signed foolishly by our country.
00:24:38.000 And finally, we're ensuring that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund, and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.
00:24:49.000 And we thought we had a deal, but then they backed out and they came back and we thought we had a deal and they backed out.
00:24:55.000 I said, you can't deal with these people.
00:24:58.000 You've got to do it the right way.
00:25:01.000 But don't worry, the Iranians will always have a little help from their friends, like the terror supporter Zarin Mamdani.
00:25:07.000 And I say that advisedly, considering he literally cut a wrap in favor of people who were convicted for terror support.
00:25:12.000 Here is Zarin Mamdani reacting, the mayor of New York.
00:25:16.000 I'm old enough to remember when there was a smoking hole in the ground in New York and 3,000 dead New Yorkers thanks to terrorism.
00:25:22.000 Zarmam Dhani is old enough to remember when he, you know, was associated with people who support that kind of thing.
00:25:29.000 Here is Zarmam Dani.
00:25:31.000 Today's military strikes by the United States and Israel mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal act of war, of aggression, bombing cities, killing civilians, opening up a new theater of war.
00:25:46.000 Americans do not want this.
00:25:48.000 Americans do not want another war in pursuit of regime change.
00:25:51.000 We want an answer to the affordability crisis.
00:25:53.000 We want peace.
00:25:54.000 Now, I may be a young mayor, but I am old enough to remember the devastating consequences of our country's pursuit of regime change in this same region not that many years ago.
00:26:05.000 And I'm old enough to remember when, again, there was a gigantic smoking hole in the ground thanks to the predations of Islamic terrorism.
00:26:13.000 And I'm old enough to remember because I'm, you know, not all that old.
00:26:16.000 I don't think you have to be that old to remember Iran spreading terrorism all over the region and Zor Mamdani acting as though history began last night or three nights ago, that Iran was not doing anything is asinine.
00:26:28.000 We reviewed the timeline over and over on the show over the course of the last several days.
00:26:32.000 Nearly half a century of Iranian war on America, ranging from the Hezbollah bombing of the Marine barracks in 1983 in Lebanon to the Iranian support for the murder of hundreds of American troops in Iraq.
00:26:44.000 But this is your left.
00:26:45.000 This is the left that the Iranians are counting on.
00:26:47.000 They can always count on the editorial page over at the New York Times, Nicholas Christoph, who has never been right about anything, doing the same sort of shtick.
00:26:55.000 You know, I feel for the Iranians because they, I mean, they've just suffered these brutal massacres, but it's not at all obvious to me that a war with Iran is going to improve things for those Iranians.
00:27:06.000 I think that if the U.S. had focused more on getting Starlink terminals inside Iran, on using the intelligence community to broadcast the corruption, the hypocrisy of the regime, you know, I think that would have been helpful.
00:27:23.000 Now, would it have achieved the results?
00:27:25.000 I don't know, but I think it might have been more likely than, you know, than this campaign of bombing, and certainly it would have been much less risky.
00:27:37.000 I can't take the level of stupidity here.
00:27:38.000 I cannot.
00:27:39.000 It is almost impossible to take this level of stupidity.
00:27:41.000 So you had literally millions of Iranians in the streets just weeks ago, and they're getting shot by the tens of thousands.
00:27:47.000 And his answer is, you know, maybe if they knew more about how corrupt the regime is via Starlink, you schmuck, you ridiculous figure, Nicholas Christoph.
00:27:55.000 Yes, clearly what the Iranians were lacking was information about how corrupt and unworkable their regime is.
00:28:00.000 Clearly, the Iranians, who can't pay for water at this point, clearly they need more information.
00:28:05.000 What they need was an informational war, you see.
00:28:08.000 These clowns.
00:28:09.000 And then, of course, there's Gavin Newsom taking every side of every possible issue.
00:28:13.000 Again, more positions than the Common Sutra, the governor of California.
00:28:17.000 He is spreading the libel that American and Israeli forces were targeting school children, which again, this is gross stuff coming from Gavin Newsom.
00:28:25.000 Truly gross.
00:28:26.000 We have to reconcile why our bombs were used or Israeli bombs were used to kill children, young girls at a school, and what the imminent threat was.
00:28:35.000 It hasn't been described.
00:28:38.000 Okay, the imminent threat has, in fact, been described, and the overall threat has been described for literally decades.
00:28:43.000 And this notion that we have to justify bad things happening in war by accident, you have just forbade all military conflict forever, forever, because it turns out bad things happen in war.
00:28:55.000 And by the way, we still don't know all the facts about this school, what happened, where it was located.
00:29:00.000 Apparently, it was located next to an old IRGC facility.
00:29:03.000 It could have been mistaken intelligence.
00:29:05.000 The understanding is that it was an American plane, maybe, or it might have been a failed ballistic missile from the Iranians.
00:29:11.000 We actually don't know at this point.
00:29:13.000 Even if it was just an accident from the Allied forces, the slander against American soldiers that we are purposefully targeting school children is disgusting, truly disgusting.
00:29:23.000 Well, fortunately, there's one Democrat who says the right things.
00:29:25.000 That's Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania.
00:29:27.000 He joins us on the line right now.
00:29:28.000 Senator Fetterman, thanks so much for the time.
00:29:30.000 Really appreciate it.
00:29:31.000 Well, it's great to be.
00:29:33.000 I'm glad we finally connected.
00:29:36.000 Yeah, so Senator Fetterman, let's talk about the president's action in Iran.
00:29:40.000 You have been forthright.
00:29:41.000 You've been a clarion call inside your own party saying that Iran should never be allowed to achieve a nuclear weapon.
00:29:47.000 They were developing ballistic missiles.
00:29:48.000 They were spreading terrorism.
00:29:49.000 All of that was true.
00:29:50.000 So you've said, well, then the actions, the president's actions here are appropriate.
00:29:56.000 What do you make of the president's actions?
00:29:57.000 Why are so many people in your party critical of what the president is doing when it seems like that was the only road to actually achieve the goal of disarming the Iranian government?
00:30:08.000 The only thing I can figure out is that it came from Trump.
00:30:14.000 Honestly, I mean, I just refuse to just accept the fact that one of the most evil leaders in recorded recent history, I mean, he's dead.
00:30:27.000 I mean, another 48 other ones were killed in that, just that one day.
00:30:31.000 Why can't we just say that's great for a lot of different reasons?
00:30:36.000 And it's like, I'm so tired of people hiding behind the line of like, well, we can never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb or these kinds of specific kinds of missiles.
00:30:49.000 Well, then what about?
00:30:50.000 Is it just more tweet about it?
00:30:53.000 You know, more harsh language?
00:30:54.000 You know, or are you really just to say, hey, something's been done and it actually achieved those things?
00:31:01.000 Why can't you say, yes, that's the right thing, you know, for Israel?
00:31:06.000 It's the right thing for the region, the world order.
00:31:09.000 And also, it's for me, that's American first in the sense that, you know, it's a fight for civilization.
00:31:16.000 And now it's like the way we're going to stand with Israel.
00:31:19.000 And that's our values.
00:31:21.000 And for me, that's democracy.
00:31:24.000 I really, truly don't understand why they can't just acknowledge that the world is more safe after those actions taken.
00:31:33.000 Senator Fetterman, you've been incredibly consistent with regard to support for America, for Israel and its fight against Islamic terrorism over the course of the last several years.
00:31:41.000 Obviously, for some reason, this has become a divisive issue.
00:31:44.000 There are some on the right who are dividing.
00:31:45.000 There are a lot on the left who have been taking the opposite position.
00:31:48.000 What do you think the trend line is inside the Democratic Party with regard to Israel and with regard to Middle Eastern policy from the United States?
00:31:58.000 Are you confident that the Democratic Party will move in a better direction in the near future when it comes to defending America's interests in the Middle East with the muscularity necessary to actually achieve victory?
00:32:09.000 No, no, unfortunately.
00:32:11.000 Actually, it's just going to be, it's worse.
00:32:13.000 I mean, I just, I just read an article in Politico that described the situation in the Illinois Democrat primary.
00:32:22.000 And now they're even drilling down on obscure things that someone visited Israel like six or seven years ago.
00:32:30.000 You have to explain that.
00:32:31.000 You have to like just, you know, I've already assumed that it's going to get more and more divisive and it's going to become more of like a purity test or this kind of like this weird thing.
00:32:44.000 For me, it often becomes a lot of anti-Semitism at its root.
00:32:49.000 Otherwise, where if you have to be in a primary asked to defend just visiting, visiting Israel back in like, I think it was 2019, why?
00:33:00.000 Why is that even an issue?
00:33:02.000 Why is it a problem?
00:33:04.000 But now, if you've done that, then you must mean you support genocide and describe Israel as a genocide thing.
00:33:11.000 That's really becoming the essence of a lot of these primaries, whether it's in Maine or whether it's here in Illinois and across the Democratic Party.
00:33:21.000 I sadly assume that's going to continue to move more and more towards that.
00:33:25.000 And they have mainstreamed this idea that Israel engaged in genocide.
00:33:32.000 And now people that are part of that part of the party are now announcing in Germany, in Germany, that Israel talk about genocide sitting in Germany for that.
00:33:47.000 So I think that's going to continue to intensify.
00:33:52.000 You know, Senator Federal, given that sort of backdrop, looking forward to 2028, obviously, you're a Democrat.
00:33:57.000 Presumably you'd like to see a Democrat take the White House.
00:33:59.000 When you look at the Democratic field, you mentioned by proxy there, Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, who may run for president.
00:34:05.000 She, of course, is the person who is in Germany suggesting that Israel had committed a genocide.
00:34:10.000 Do you see the possibility of a moderate Democrat taking the nomination in 2028, given the fact that there is this sort of animus that has arisen on the part of many in the base for Israel and for American interests in the region?
00:34:24.000 I really don't have any thoughts on 2028 in that sense.
00:34:28.000 I mean, that's a long way out and things are always going to change.
00:34:31.000 And you just never know.
00:34:32.000 I mean, the last past presidents came from nowhere or assume that's not going to be the case.
00:34:39.000 So for me, I don't really have any thoughts, but I will can assume that it's going to get more and more anti-Israel in the Democratic Party and really the spirit of where the party's at in the primaries, like in the Senate, in a lot of the House races now.
00:34:55.000 And if you check any of them, it becomes more and more a purity test.
00:35:00.000 And it's described as, you know, you genocide or some kinds of other absurd things.
00:35:08.000 So, you know, that's where we're at.
00:35:09.000 I mean, that's a fact.
00:35:11.000 Find a primary.
00:35:12.000 It's really hard.
00:35:13.000 I can't think to find anyone that's proudly to stand with Israel.
00:35:19.000 I had APAC visit my office just last week.
00:35:23.000 And now I'm like, hey, here's the picture.
00:35:26.000 Here I'm at.
00:35:28.000 I just put that out if somebody wants to judge me because I'm going to support Israel through all of these things.
00:35:36.000 It's like, okay, but that's where I'm at.
00:35:38.000 And just watch how other people in my party are back away.
00:35:42.000 Or the, in fact, some try to have it both ways.
00:35:45.000 Well, we can't ever have them acquire a nuclear bomb.
00:35:48.000 I really won't back any doing anything about it.
00:35:52.000 But that's really the empty kind of rhetoric.
00:35:56.000 Senator Fetterman, you've been briefed, obviously, by members of the Trump administration on the Hill about the ongoing action in Iran.
00:36:03.000 How do you think it's going so far?
00:36:04.000 What's your sort of takeaway from the efficacy of the U.S.-Israeli operation?
00:36:09.000 I think it's been outstanding.
00:36:11.000 When you can wipe out almost 50 of the leadership in just really one hit, that's tremendous.
00:36:18.000 And really, what's happening at this point?
00:36:21.000 It's just a bunch of cheap drones just they're flailing and just firing it around.
00:36:26.000 You know, they threatened to sink our ships now.
00:36:30.000 Like we've just annihilated.
00:36:33.000 I wouldn't even describe what Iran has as a navy, but most of them are at the bottom of the Persian Gulf right now, too, as they should.
00:36:41.000 So it's what, when is Iran going to shoot their shot?
00:36:46.000 Because it seems like they never really had a shot to shoot.
00:36:49.000 At this point, it's just flailing.
00:36:51.000 And I can't understand what they think the upside is to attack a lot of the other Arab nations in the region.
00:36:57.000 It's just going to continue to isolate Iran.
00:37:00.000 And I could even see that could be a silver lying that that could make the Abraham accordings more, more likely, or just realizing that what a cancer that Iran is.
00:37:13.000 And now I think everyone, I mean, look at the kind of garbage that's grieving that he's done.
00:37:19.000 You know, like he's gone.
00:37:21.000 I mean, like, who's grieving?
00:37:22.000 Who's grieving for this person?
00:37:24.000 And a lot of them are the same people, you know, that were in this protesting space, like Code Pink and other people that are showing up and they're protesting to hands off and defending Iran.
00:37:38.000 It is absolutely part of the rot of a faction within the very left part of my party.
00:37:48.000 Well, that is Senator John Fetterman.
00:37:49.000 Senator Fetterman, you'll be pleased to know that actually the breaking news as of this morning was that the Israeli Air Force, the IDF, had struck 88 council members at the Assembly of Experts.
00:37:59.000 They were choosing Ayatollah Khomeini's successor.
00:38:02.000 And breaking news this morning is that Israel bombed that gathering while the votes were being taken.
00:38:08.000 So things are going poorly for the Iranian government at this point.
00:38:12.000 Again, extraordinary transparency into what's going on in Iran from both Mossad and from the CIA and from all the intelligence apparatus.
00:38:19.000 Pretty astonishing stuff.
00:38:19.000 Senator Fetterman, thanks so much for your time and your bravery in standing up in favor of Western civilization.
00:38:26.000 Thank you.
00:38:26.000 And the Israeli intelligence is just incredible, incredible.
00:38:31.000 And so I'm proud to stand with Israel through this.
00:38:36.000 And now, just because it comes from a Republican president, it's like, why can't we just acknowledge that the world is better and safer and more just?
00:38:46.000 You know, what's happened now in Iran?
00:38:49.000 So thank you.
00:38:52.000 Thank you so much, Senator Fetterman.
00:38:54.000 And then, of course, there is the horseshoe right.
00:38:57.000 Again, the Iranians are counting on this coalition, the lying left, the vast majority of the Democratic Party, except for Senator Fetterman, apparently, and the horseshoe right.
00:39:04.000 Now, right away, let's make a distinction.
00:39:07.000 You can and you should totally have questions for the Trump administration about the rationale for the Iran action.
00:39:12.000 I mean, I think that we've been spending 47 years learning the rationale.
00:39:16.000 And I've spent many shows over the course of a decade explaining the rationale.
00:39:20.000 This is why it was good for the Trump administration to kill Qasem Soleimani.
00:39:24.000 It is why it was good for President Trump to drop a big giant bomb on the Fordo nuclear facility.
00:39:28.000 It is not as though these questions are new in the asking.
00:39:31.000 And I'm sort of strangely mystified by people who are acting, again, as though history began literally three days ago.
00:39:37.000 And now we must ask these questions de novo, but okay, fine, fine, fine, fine.
00:39:40.000 Ask those questions.
00:39:41.000 The question, as always, is whether people are actually asking honest questions or whether they are not really asking questions, whether they are actually just doing Iranian propaganda work.
00:39:52.000 That's really the question here.
00:39:54.000 The honest questions can have honest answers.
00:39:57.000 So, for example, Matt Walsh, he's been tweeting his skepticism of the war.
00:40:02.000 And Caroline Lovitt over at the White House responded in calm and concerted fashion to Matt's concerns: quote, on Saturday, President Trump released a statement laying out clear objectives to the American people for Operation Epic Fury.
00:40:13.000 Let me reiterate them: destroy the Iranian regime's missiles and raise their missile industry to the ground.
00:40:17.000 Annihilate the Iranian regime's navy.
00:40:19.000 Ensure the regime's terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces.
00:40:24.000 Stop them from making and using IEDs or roadside bombs, which have gravely wounded and killed thousands and thousands of people, including many Americans.
00:40:31.000 Guarantee that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon.
00:40:34.000 Preventing this radical regime and its terrorist leaders from threatening America and our core national security interests is a clear-eyed and necessary objective.
00:40:41.000 Killing terrorists is good for America.
00:40:43.000 49 of the most senior Iranian regime leaders, including the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have already been wiped off the face of the earth so far in the opening strikes of Operation Epic Fury.
00:40:54.000 Finally, she adds, while Operation Midnight Hammer did obliterate Iran's major nuclear sites, the regime was fully committed to rebuilding their nuclear program, and they refused to make a deal despite months of extensive talks and good faith efforts by President Trump's top negotiators.
00:41:06.000 Simply put, the terrorist Iranian regime would not say yes to peace.
00:41:09.000 For 47 years, the Iranian regime has actively and intentionally facilitated the killing of Americans while chanting death to America and funding other bloodthirsty terrorists seeking to destroy the United States and all of Western civilization.
00:41:21.000 Prior American leaders were too weak and cowardly to do anything about it.
00:41:24.000 Now, President Donald J. Trump is correcting decades of cowardice and holding those responsible for the deaths of Americans accountable.
00:41:31.000 Their brutal attacks and threats will finally end under President Trump.
00:41:34.000 America will win.
00:41:34.000 The terrorists will be defeated.
00:41:36.000 Hey, so again, find ask questions.
00:41:38.000 Caroline Levitt gives answers or you could ask the, again, non-interventionist vice president of the United States, JD Vance.
00:41:46.000 Here he was last night.
00:41:48.000 In a perfect world, yeah, we would love it if somebody came to power in Iran who was willing to work with the United States, who is willing to show some respect to the United States, and again, most importantly, made that long-term commitment that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
00:42:03.000 But ultimately, Jesse, whatever happens with the regime in one form or another, it's incidental to the president's primary objective here, which is to make sure the Iranian terrorist regime does not build a nuclear bomb.
00:42:18.000 Now, again, it is totally fine to ask questions or be skeptical.
00:42:21.000 That's America.
00:42:22.000 You're welcome to it.
00:42:24.000 And if you're asking a real question and a real answer is provided, you can change your opinion or you can disagree with that opinion.
00:42:29.000 But that is not the same thing as people who are simply lying.
00:42:32.000 And you can tell who's lying right now.
00:42:35.000 Now, at least you can say of the lying left that they are willing to call out the man who actually made the call here, Donald Trump.
00:42:40.000 The horseshoe right is busy spreading defeatist nonsense while simultaneously trying to avoid saying President Trump's name like he's Voldemort.
00:42:48.000 That is because they are utter and complete cucks.
00:42:51.000 Yes, cucks.
00:42:52.000 And yes, because they love the algorithmic traffic.
00:42:54.000 They are grifters.
00:42:55.000 They are grifting for cash.
00:42:56.000 They know that most Americans don't follow foreign policy all that closely.
00:43:00.000 And so they can spew kind of whatever they want.
00:43:02.000 And many of these folks only win if America loses, because then they get to claim that they were heroically standing up against a deep, dark conspiracy that only they could identify.
00:43:12.000 So yesterday, Tucker Carlson, who is leader of the cuck coalition here, yesterday on his show, he suggested that the war was being waged only, not because America had any interests, only, only, only because Israel wanted the war, which of course has been denied by the Trump administration.
00:43:29.000 The facts are against it, but facts never got in the way of a good clickable story for Tucker Carlson.
00:43:37.000 This happened because Israel wanted it to happen.
00:43:41.000 This is Israel's war.
00:43:43.000 This is not the United States' war.
00:43:45.000 This war is not being waged on behalf of American national security objectives to make the United States safer or richer.
00:43:52.000 War is not actually even about weapons mass destruction, nukes, Kembio.
00:43:57.000 No, this war is waged purely because Israel wanted it to be waged.
00:44:04.000 Okay, so one of the things that's fascinating about Tucker's show yesterday is he barely mentioned the man who is in charge of the war and declared it the president of the United States because Tucker is a coward.
00:44:13.000 He is a coward.
00:44:15.000 Let me express again: the president of the United States is the one who commands the armed services of the United States.
00:44:21.000 If Tucker wants to claim that Donald J. Trump is a tool of the Jews, which is clearly what he wants to say, he should just say it.
00:44:29.000 But he's a coward.
00:44:30.000 Not only is he a coward, he's a disseminator of absolute lies, lies so bad that his Qatari handlers could not even justify the lies.
00:44:39.000 So yesterday on his show, Tucker put out the bizarre theory that Mossad agents had been arrested in Qatar and Saudi Arabia trying to bomb targets, which of course makes zero sense since Qatar, Saudi, and Israel are on the same side of this war.
00:44:51.000 But here he was yesterday making a claim so overtly false that the government of Qatar, again, he's best friends with those people.
00:44:58.000 He's got a nice house in Qatar, apparently.
00:45:01.000 Even they had to say they didn't know what the hell he was talking about.
00:45:06.000 So it's probably not, hasn't been reported, but it's a fact that last night in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, authorities arrested Mossad agents planning on committing bombings in those countries.
00:45:18.000 Now, that's weird.
00:45:20.000 That doesn't make any sense.
00:45:21.000 Why would the Israelis be committing bombings in two Gulf countries, which are also being attacked by Iran?
00:45:30.000 Aren't they on the same side?
00:45:32.000 No.
00:45:34.000 No.
00:45:35.000 Israel wants to hurt Iran and Qatar and UAE and Saudi and Bahrain and Oman and Kuwait.
00:45:46.000 You might want to slow down on those out pouches, bud.
00:45:48.000 I mean, seriously, because what the actual F are you talking about?
00:45:53.000 Now, we know what he's trying to do there.
00:45:55.000 Tucker is trying to suggest that pretty much all attacks on everyone outside of Israel is a false flag operation.
00:46:03.000 That's what he's clearly trying to suggest there.
00:46:06.000 And I find it strangely suspicious that just a few hours later, the U.S. embassy in Riyadh was attacked by drones, according to the Saudi Defense Forces.
00:46:19.000 Okay, so just a few hours after Tucker suggested that a false flag would basically occur in Saudi, there was a drone attack in Saudi from the Iranians, according to the Saudis.
00:46:30.000 Strange, very, very strange.
00:46:32.000 But let's be real: Tucker has his conspiracy theory and he's sticking to it.
00:46:35.000 And the idea is that the United States government is controlled by the Jews.
00:46:40.000 That is essentially the claim that he is making.
00:46:42.000 Megan Kelly has also jumped on this bandwagon, apparently, for the clicks and giggles of it.
00:46:48.000 No one should have to die for a foreign country.
00:46:51.000 I don't think those four service members died for the United States.
00:46:54.000 I think they died for Iran or for Israel.
00:46:58.000 I think I understand how this helps Iran perfectly well.
00:47:01.000 I get it.
00:47:02.000 I mean, I hope.
00:47:04.000 Long term, we'll see.
00:47:06.000 But they seem rather jubilant.
00:47:07.000 80% of the country does not support the Ayatollah.
00:47:10.000 He was a terrible, terrible man.
00:47:11.000 No one's crying that he's dead.
00:47:13.000 No normal person.
00:47:15.000 But our government's job is not to look out for Iran or for Israel.
00:47:19.000 It's to look out for us.
00:47:21.000 And this feels very much to me like it is clearly Israel's war.
00:47:27.000 Mark Levin wanted it.
00:47:29.000 Ben Shapiro, Lindsey Graham, Miriam Madelson.
00:47:29.000 It's his war.
00:47:33.000 That's obvious.
00:47:37.000 Okay, so first of all, the ugly suggestion that Mark Levin is somehow a traitor to the United States, that it's Israel's war, and Mark Levin wanted it because it's Israel's war or I want it or Lindsey Graham or Miriam Madelson.
00:47:49.000 Really disgusting stuff from Megan Kelly, but predictable at this point.
00:47:53.000 You know whose war this is?
00:47:54.000 President Donald J. Trump's war.
00:47:55.000 He's the president of the United States.
00:47:57.000 He commands the United States military.
00:47:59.000 She is such a coward.
00:48:00.000 She is such an unbelievable coward.
00:48:01.000 You don't like President Trump.
00:48:03.000 You don't like what he's saying?
00:48:03.000 Just say his name, you coward.
00:48:06.000 You unbelievable coward.
00:48:08.000 Tucker and Megan both.
00:48:09.000 Unbelievable cowardice.
00:48:11.000 Say his name.
00:48:14.000 You won't.
00:48:15.000 You won't.
00:48:17.000 And of course, Megan is wildly inconsistent.
00:48:19.000 In October 2024, she tweeted, quote, I was in the situation room when things got bad is not a response to, you haven't treated Iran like our number one threat.
00:48:27.000 So there she was labeling Iran our number one threat in 2024, but something has changed.
00:48:31.000 Could it be clickable algorithmic idiocy?
00:48:35.000 Of course, the issue here is not just that Megan Kelly has some questionable principles and has been programming directly into the Groyper Reich.
00:48:42.000 It is that she remains a coward.
00:48:45.000 Remember, this is still the woman who says she is friends with Candace Owens and has literally nothing to say for months at this point about the lady who keeps attacking her supposed friend Erica Kirk day after day after day after day.
00:48:56.000 By the way, here's how Candace Owens spent her crazy day yesterday.
00:49:00.000 Charlie was removed and in his place, we got a Shabbat shalom, not-so-grieving widow.
00:49:06.000 This is the book my Charlie wanted you to read.
00:49:09.000 He just finished it.
00:49:10.000 He loves the Jews.
00:49:11.000 He just finished speaking about how much he loves to Shabbat and to Shalom and to say daddy's home and to throw down his phone, Barry Weiss.
00:49:22.000 We are months into Megan Kelly's silence on this.
00:49:25.000 Months.
00:49:25.000 After all, according to Megan Kelly, she would rather die than condemn Candace.
00:49:29.000 Very strange for what reasons Megan will go to the wall.
00:49:32.000 Very, very, very strange.
00:49:34.000 Very strange indeed.
00:49:35.000 Meanwhile, MTG still wandering the wilds, but of course, has a home on Megan Kelly's show where she can spew her nonsense.
00:49:42.000 Here she was implying that President Trump is going to hell.
00:49:46.000 Megan, this really needs to be said.
00:49:49.000 Donald Trump has said repeatedly on camera and in interviews, he doesn't think he's going to heaven.
00:49:55.000 Well, I want to ask a question, a serious question.
00:49:58.000 What is in his mind?
00:50:00.000 What is his mental state?
00:50:01.000 If he doesn't think he's going to heaven and he is a man towards the end, he's in the fourth quarter.
00:50:06.000 He's towards the end of his life.
00:50:08.000 How does that pan out for the rest of us when we have a president of the United States who doesn't think and is convinced he's not going to heaven?
00:50:17.000 What does that mean his decision-making is?
00:50:21.000 This disgusting conspiratorial nonsense.
00:50:23.000 My goodness, how the horseshoe right has gotten uglier and uglier day in and day out.
00:50:34.000 Astonishing stuff.
00:50:35.000 The president of the United States, by the way, was asked about the Tucker Carlson, Megan and Kelly horseshoe right.
00:50:41.000 And he said, MAGA is Trump.
00:50:43.000 MAGA's not the other two.
00:50:45.000 He said that Carlson can, quote, say whatever he wants.
00:50:47.000 It has no impact on me, which is a pretty cold, cold rip from the president.
00:50:52.000 On Megan Kelly, Trump said, Megan was opposed to me for years when I ran the first time and nothing stopped me.
00:50:57.000 And so, you know, some people are against and they always come back.
00:50:59.000 She came all the way back.
00:51:00.000 But now I guess she maybe doesn't like the idea of this war, but I do because I have to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of the Iranians.
00:51:06.000 Yeah, that is the president being very, very, very nice.
00:51:10.000 Now, again, the goal here from Iran is to provide fodder for all of these people, for the lying left and the horseshoe right, in an attempt to shift Americans away from support.
00:51:19.000 And of course, the polls are not particularly favorable toward this intervention by the United States.
00:51:24.000 Not a gigantic shock, because as we'll discuss in a little while with Ben Dominich, the reality is that the president, in favor of a winning strategy, forewent making months of case about what to do.
00:51:38.000 So, right now, something like 59% of Americans, according to the New Reuters Ipsos poll, say that they are against this sort of intervention.
00:51:45.000 But here's the thing: in a short war with actual goals, the only thing that matters is whether we win or not.
00:51:54.000 And that is not up to the podcast, boys and girls.
00:51:59.000 It is not up to the Democrats in Congress and outside Congress and the legacy media.
00:52:04.000 It only matters if the president loses his mettle.
00:52:07.000 And President Trump, whose war this is and whose name I am happy to mention because he's the man who made the call, a courageous call, in my opinion, he says he's not losing his metal.
00:52:15.000 You know, all you people who think he's going to get bored, he ain't bored.
00:52:19.000 Somebody said today, they said, oh, well, if the president wants to do it really quickly after that, he'll get bored.
00:52:25.000 I don't get bored.
00:52:27.000 There's nothing boring about this.
00:52:28.000 Do you agree with that, Pete?
00:52:30.000 I don't think there's anything, Mr. General.
00:52:32.000 I think there's nothing boring about it.
00:52:34.000 Somebody actually said from the media, I think he'll get bored after about a week or two.
00:52:39.000 No, we don't get bored.
00:52:40.000 I never get bored.
00:52:42.000 If I got bored, I wouldn't be standing here right now.
00:52:44.000 I guarantee you that.
00:52:48.000 Well, that is where we are.
00:52:51.000 So here is a real question.
00:52:52.000 You want to ask some real questions?
00:52:53.000 Here's a real question.
00:52:54.000 I'm getting this from a lot of folks, and it's a reasonable question.
00:52:56.000 Are we safer now?
00:52:58.000 And that question is really kind of two questions.
00:53:00.000 Are we safer geopolitically, which means in real term economically and also long term?
00:53:05.000 And are we safer in this very, very, very moment?
00:53:07.000 So let's start with that second question first.
00:53:09.000 Are we safer right in this very moment?
00:53:11.000 And the answer is probably not, because we are never safer when we do foreign policy in the immediate term.
00:53:17.000 Never.
00:53:17.000 There's never been a time in human history where when you do war, the people at home are suddenly like in that immediate term safer.
00:53:25.000 That's just not how conflict works.
00:53:27.000 Yes, Iran has sleeper cells.
00:53:28.000 Yes, they are incentivized to pursue terrorist attacks.
00:53:30.000 And yes, Hezbollah and other wings of the Democratic terror army operate globally.
00:53:36.000 And yes, thanks to Joe Biden and Barack Obama and other open borders presidents, we imported a bunch of horrific, horrific people to the United States over the past few decades.
00:53:44.000 The Daily Wire reported just yesterday that, quote, a DC area mosque pledged its loyalty on Sunday to our leader, Shaheed Ayatollah Ali Khamenai, mourning his martyrdom after the Iranian dictator was killed in a U.S.-Israeli operation.
00:53:57.000 The Manassas Mosque is a sponsor alongside left-wing groups like CodePink and the DC chapter of Democratic Socialists of America of a stop the war on Iran march on the White House that was planned for Monday night.
00:54:07.000 On its Instagram page, the mosque called Iran's dictator its leader and demanded an end to U.S. Zionist aggression.
00:54:13.000 So we have those people in our country.
00:54:15.000 But let's be real, the DHS has gotten a lot better at this over the years.
00:54:19.000 Our domestic counterterror capacities are far stronger than they were in the 90s.
00:54:24.000 And most importantly, much more importantly, when it comes to making foreign policy, if the rule is we can never do anything in foreign policy that ever raises risks, even slightly, or that we can never pursue any military action that ends with low military casualties but outside results, congrats, you basically just surrendered America's foreign policy.
00:54:42.000 Like that's the end of America's foreign policy.
00:54:44.000 So just as by way of example, like a compare and contrast, take ISIS.
00:54:48.000 So ISIS began gaining serious territory in 2014 under Barack Obama.
00:54:52.000 And by December 2019, President Trump announced that ISIS had been essentially disintegrated in Syria and Iraq.
00:54:59.000 But ISIS-inspired attacks continue even to now.
00:55:01.000 Since 2014, ISIS attacks have taken nearly 100 lives in the United States.
00:55:06.000 The San Bernardino shooting, December 2015, 14 dead.
00:55:09.000 The Pulse Nightclub shooting, June 2016, 49 dead.
00:55:12.000 The New York City truck attack, October 2017, eight dead.
00:55:15.000 The New Orleans truck attack just last year, January, 15 dead.
00:55:18.000 A lot more wounded.
00:55:19.000 11 stabbed at Ohio State in November 26, 2016, rather.
00:55:23.000 10 stabbed in Minnesota in that same year.
00:55:26.000 So here is the question.
00:55:27.000 Should the United States have just left ISIS alone?
00:55:31.000 In fact, should we just generally leave terrorists or terrorist regimes alone, even when they threaten our interests and spread their tentacles abroad?
00:55:37.000 Well, it turns out we did try that one time.
00:55:39.000 We tried it in Afghanistan with Al-Qaeda.
00:55:41.000 And it turns out the risks of an action can be pretty, pretty big for those of us who have a memory longer than that of a guppy.
00:55:48.000 But we don't have to refer back to 9-11.
00:55:51.000 Let us be real here.
00:55:52.000 A terror regime in control of nuclear weaponry, which is what Iran was pursuing, or significant ballistic missile weaponry, like long-range ballistic missiles, plus a gigantic terror apparatus that threatens our allies and economic pipelines, including, by the way, the Strait of Hormuz.
00:56:06.000 The IRGC yesterday announced they had closed it.
00:56:08.000 It's not true.
00:56:09.000 You know why it's not true?
00:56:10.000 Because we sank their entire navy.
00:56:12.000 That's why.
00:56:13.000 You know what was good?
00:56:14.000 Preventing them from having the capacity to shut the Strait of Hormuz because that creates serious geopolitical economic problems because 20% of global oil moves through the Strait of Hormuz.
00:56:24.000 And by the way, leaving an Iran in place that is stronger, more powerful, more threatening builds up the enemy coalition of China and Russia.
00:56:33.000 What the United States is doing geopolitically is one of the great moves I have ever seen.
00:56:38.000 Not just because it is cutting the head off of the snake in the Middle East, but because Iran acts as a connector between the two powers that are also most powerful and oriented against us in China and Russia.
00:56:51.000 The vast majority of Iran's oil went to China.
00:56:54.000 The vast majority of Iranian weapon export went to Russia.
00:56:57.000 And all of that is being threatened right now by the Trump administration.
00:57:01.000 This is, in fact, a transformational moment.
00:57:03.000 And an entire country can't be held hostage by threats of lone wolf terrorism, particularly a country with the strongest military in human history.
00:57:11.000 The United States, in fact, should not be held hostage to any threat from a foreign country.
00:57:15.000 That is literally the reason we have a government to exterminate threats, foreign and domestic.
00:57:20.000 So, where are we?
00:57:22.000 The answer is we are winning.
00:57:24.000 We are winning.
00:57:25.000 Here's the NATO Secretary General Mark Rudy supporting President Trump.
00:57:29.000 Let me also say that the commander-in-chief, the leader of the free worlds, President Donald J. Trump, I really commend what is happening here.
00:57:37.000 Taking out Khamenei, taking out the nuclear capability in Iran, but also taking out the ballistic missile program in Iran.
00:57:46.000 This is crucial.
00:57:47.000 And what I see in Europe, I spoke with all the key European leaders over the weekend, is widespread support for what the president is doing and also making sure that when it comes to logistics, access, defending key U.S. interests in Europe and in the region, the Europeans are really stepping up.
00:58:06.000 The regime's command and control in Iran is reportedly already cracking.
00:58:09.000 I mean, it helps when every time they gather to select a new leader, Israel bombs it into obliteration.
00:58:15.000 Iran's missile structure is so degraded that their pace of fire has tremendously slowed.
00:58:19.000 Right now, they're stuck in a catch-22.
00:58:20.000 The way that it works is that Iran, every time they light up a missile launcher, it gets blown up.
00:58:25.000 If they light up too many missile launchers, they all get blown up.
00:58:28.000 And then they have literally no forward capacity.
00:58:30.000 So they've been shrinking their missile barrages down and down and down in the hope of sort of outlasting the commitment of Israel and the United States to go after those missile capacities.
00:58:41.000 And so they've been relegated to firing off sort of random drones and random missiles here and there.
00:58:45.000 That's going to slow over the course of the week even more.
00:58:49.000 So here's the deal: ask all the questions you want.
00:58:51.000 It's a free country.
00:58:51.000 Good questions deserve good answers.
00:58:53.000 But understand just who the Iranian regime is counting on right now: those who are lying, those who are doing its actual dirty work, who are promoting conspiracy theories and peddling bullshit.
00:59:03.000 Because in the end, it turns out a lot of those people are happier with a nuclear Iran than a victorious America.
00:59:12.000 Well, as we have been discussing all day and yesterday and the day before, there's been a lot of talk on the left and on the right about the supposed lack of justification given by the Trump administration in the run-up to the current operation in Iran.
00:59:25.000 Joining me on the line to discuss is Ben Dominich, opinion editor at the Daily Wire and host of the Big Ben Show on Fox.
00:59:31.000 Ben, of course, a brand new edition here at Daily Wire, which is just another reason you should grab your membership right now, become a subscriber because we have tons of great stuff going on.
00:59:39.000 Ben is helping revitalize the opinion side of the Daily Wire editorial page.
00:59:43.000 Ben, let's talk about your piece that I think is quite brilliant over the last 24 hours talking about why President Trump didn't really sell Americans on what he was going to do.
00:59:53.000 Well, basically, the critique that had been emerging from Capitol Hill over the past several weeks, Ben, was that the administration and the president in particular needed to be saying more to build up American opinion in favor of action in Iran and also to prepare the ground for the fact that this is not going to be a quick smash and grab.
01:00:14.000 This is not the same as Venezuela.
01:00:16.000 This is not an exfiltration.
01:00:17.000 This is something that's going to take weeks, potentially months, and it's going to have a lot of outside effects that are going to affect the world economy, energy prices, et cetera.
01:00:27.000 That the president needed basically be out there more making this case.
01:00:31.000 And I think that what the president realized, which is something that a lot of politicians maybe don't, he always has these perspectives on things that I think come at things from a different angle than the traditional conventional wisdom.
01:00:44.000 And I think that he realized that the American people really don't assess foreign policy decisions anymore based on the kind of build-up lead up to achieving certain ends.
01:00:55.000 We all remember, of course, the George W. Bush administration, how much effort they put into making the case for the war with Iraq.
01:01:02.000 And then, you know, ultimately, even though people bought into it, even though it had the kind of buy-in at the time, the results were the way that they were measured and the way that people judged them.
01:01:12.000 And I think that in this case, the president understood the only thing that matters here is success.
01:01:19.000 If we come out at the end with what is viewed as a win, the American people will all be behind it, whether they really were originally or not.
01:01:26.000 And they'll be in favor of it because of that outcome.
01:01:29.000 And I think that because of that, he felt that the ability to surprise the Iranians, to basically have them negotiating up until the last second, even if he'd already made the decision internally, I believe he had, weeks ago about what he was going to do,
01:01:44.000 that that was actually more valuable for the cause of America and Israel and our allies in the region than any kind of seeding of the ground or long buildup that would have involved meetings and interactions with allies and everything else that we're used to that the Europeans really love, but Donald Trump actually hates.
01:02:06.000 You know, Ben, one of the things that I think is pretty amazing about this is that somehow the United States did actually achieve the element of surprise despite what, by all objective views, should be a massive telegraph punch.
01:02:17.000 I mean, we sent half the United States military over to this region, including numerous aircraft carriers, extraordinary levels of aircraft support, and all of the rest.
01:02:26.000 I mean, you had pictures that were emerging from Ben-Gorian Airport of gigantic tankers that could only be used for refueling, stacked up dozens high.
01:02:34.000 And yet somehow surprise was still achieved.
01:02:36.000 So this does speak to sort of the overall president.
01:02:39.000 He used this ability that he has to be an ambiguous chaos agent when it comes to these foreign negotiations and national security concerns to great effect throughout his presidency.
01:02:50.000 He's doing it even more in this second go-round.
01:02:53.000 And I think that that's something that for whatever reason, other nations still are not learning from.
01:02:57.000 They're still negotiating with us as if they're dealing with the Obama administration or the Biden administration, as opposed to dealing with Donald Trump and his unique approach to foreign policy.
01:03:07.000 And I think that the other thing to consider about this, Ben, is that if you look back at the Millennium Challenge that they did, you know, this infamous war game that they did years and years ago, where they brought out this crusty old three-star named Van Riper, who was able to effect a major attack in that war game that eliminated numerous American ships, even including an American carrier.
01:03:32.000 He was able to do that by throwing a ton of things at the Americans while they were setting up.
01:03:36.000 Iran, for whatever reason, they didn't do that.
01:03:39.000 And they still, I think, were operating under the assumption that they were dealing with the kind of JV team that existed under Biden and Obama that we all are familiar with when it comes to their failures, as opposed to people who they should have been taking a lot more seriously, particularly given that buildup.
01:03:59.000 You know, Ben, one of the things that really is amazing about all of this is that the assumption that President Trump is now going to engage in some sort of long-lasting occupation of Iran or that World War III is about to break out.
01:04:10.000 I'm not sure how much Trump's critics have to be wrong before they finally acknowledge that they were wrong.
01:04:15.000 The answer seems to be they never have to acknowledge that they were wrong on both the right and the left.
01:04:18.000 It is a pretty astonishing thing that we are a year out from Operation Midnight Hammer, which was supposed to start World War III.
01:04:24.000 We're all still here.
01:04:25.000 We're all still alive.
01:04:26.000 We're going to hear that Iran was going to kill thousands of Americans regionally and also globally.
01:04:32.000 So far, nothing remotely like that has materialized.
01:04:34.000 I think that if you had to sort of peg where we are four days, three and a half days into this war, the outstanding success speaks for itself.
01:04:43.000 Look, I think the end game here is still uncertain in the sense that we don't know what the result is going to be when it comes to the next Iranian leadership.
01:04:49.000 But we know what we had with the prior Iranian leadership and we know how bad it was, not just for America, but for our allies in the region.
01:04:56.000 It was not just the way that they had targeted our forces over the years in aggressive ways that led to the loss of American lives, but also, you know, the negative effect that they had as the leading state supporter of terror around the world.
01:05:09.000 I also think that there are after effects of this that could significantly undermine China at a critical juncture in its history.
01:05:17.000 And I think that that's going to be a little unpredictable.
01:05:20.000 But one of the things that I do believe that we're going to see in all likelihood emerge from this is a new leadership that at least has the ability to have a different type of relationship with the West than it had before.
01:05:31.000 And that's something that I think is going to be a positive no matter what shape that that takes.
01:05:35.000 The Iranian people have been at odds with their own leadership for so long.
01:05:39.000 They have not been a people who are happy with it.
01:05:41.000 We saw their willingness to go out and die by the tens of thousands in the streets in order to send a message to the world, a message that Donald Trump heard.
01:05:48.000 And by the way, on that World War III front, at this point, can we just sideline that World War III talk?
01:05:54.000 It's like net neutrality was going to end the internet.
01:05:56.000 Like it's that level of ridiculousness.
01:05:58.000 And look, I understand that people can point to the mistakes that people have made in the past.
01:06:03.000 Generations of people, including very authoritative people who thought that the Iraq war and other wars would lead to a domino effect that would be very positive in the region and that there would not be the kind of after effects that were negatives that we saw.
01:06:15.000 But at a certain point, when you are crying, wolf, for so long, we've got to just turn away and say, we can't take you seriously anymore when it comes to your opinions on foreign policy.
01:06:25.000 Maybe get something right for a change before we start listening to you again.
01:06:29.000 I hope that listeners and readers, people who consume media across the networks that are available to them online, that they're intelligent readers, that they are intelligent consumers of media, and that they tune out the people who are just screaming to high heaven that every single time Donald Trump decides to pull a trigger on something, it's going to lead to the world blowing up.
01:06:55.000 Well, that is Ben Dominich, the brand new opinion editor at DailyWire.
01:06:58.000 Again, go subscribe at dailywire.com for all of his content and all of our other content.
01:07:02.000 Thanks so much for the time and great insights.
01:07:04.000 All righty, guys, coming up, we'll jump right into the mailbag.
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01:07:16.000 Legal sent this list of everything we're not allowed to do in season two.
01:07:21.000 We're going to do all of it.
01:07:23.000 We've got games for celebrity guests.
01:07:25.000 And yes, the mailbag is somehow worse.
01:07:28.000 If you thought season one was extra, season two, we're doubling down.
01:07:32.000 We're not supposed to be doing this.
01:07:33.000 Exactly.