After President Trump launches an attack on Iranian nuclear sites on Saturday night, the next day, he mentions the possibility of a regime change in Iran. Will I change my stance on U.S. interventionism in the Middle East?
00:00:00.000Today on the Matt Walsh Show, President Trump launches an attack on Iranian nuclear sites on Saturday night.
00:00:04.480The next day, he mentions the possibility of a regime change in Iran.
00:00:07.200I've made my stance on U.S. interventionism in the Middle East known.
00:00:10.560Will I change my position now to keep up with the trends?
00:00:13.140No, obviously not. I'll give my full take and break down the situation today.
00:00:16.300Also, Democrats had more important things to worry about, like the fact that J.D. Vance called a Democrat lawmaker Jose.
00:00:21.720And the good folks in Canada are always happy to lighten the mood by giving us something to laugh about.
00:00:25.980They've done it again. Now they're changing their street signs to make them completely unintelligible, all in the name of decolonization.
00:00:32.100We'll talk about all that and more today on the Matt Walsh Show.
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00:04:54.140Now, the defense for that post will be that, and has already been, that Trump is trolling or that he's saying something extreme as a means to gain an advantage in negotiations,
00:05:05.080or that he means that the Iranian people should rise up and create their own regime change.
00:05:10.060And any of those interpretations could be true.
00:05:13.440But whatever his point, we absolutely cannot get involved in a regime change war.
00:05:19.720It's not up to the United States to decide what sort of regime rules over Iran.
00:05:24.540Least of all is it our job to make Iran great again.
00:05:28.160The greatness of America is our only concern.
00:05:31.340Now, of course, I have no doubt that if Trump did decide to launch a war for regime change in Iran,
00:05:35.780a certain sizable portion of right-wing influencers will discover that actually they're big fans of Dick Cheney-style foreign policy after all.
00:05:42.760We've already seen these pivots happening in certain corners.
00:05:45.420Now, that brings us to what should be the question, which is, did the attack on Iran actually benefit the United States?
00:05:58.160That is the only question that matters.
00:06:00.940And any reasonable person has to admit that there are coherent arguments on both sides.
00:06:06.640Now, the argument in favor of military intervention is that very soon Iran could, they say, build a nuclear weapon.
00:06:15.800That's according to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who has testified that, quote,
00:06:19.380Iran can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months if they decide to finalize the assembly.
00:06:24.320And she also said that in the same statement that they have no intelligence indicating that Iran actually is building a nuclear weapon.
00:06:31.800And this is a country that openly despises the United States, as many Islamic countries do.
00:06:37.300They've waged proxy wars against us in the Mideast, often through intermediaries.
00:06:41.780They've launched rockets at our soldiers.
00:06:44.000The pro-intervention crowd says that the Iranian regime is evil and murderous, which, of course, it definitely is.
00:06:50.980As I said last week, the whole regime can go to hell as far as I'm concerned.
00:06:53.840Many of them already are in hell, you know, no doubt.
00:06:56.180And so that was the argument in favor of military intervention, that this is an evil regime that's responsible for the deaths of Americans.
00:07:04.340And it could build or maybe is building, depending on who you're listening to, a nuclear weapon.
00:07:09.720That's the case that was made by that side of the argument.
00:07:13.540And it's the case that ultimately won out, clearly.
00:07:20.460There are some serious problems with this line of argument, problems that led me to think that it's a bad idea for America to get involved.
00:08:32.640But the similarities are striking enough to give any thoughtful person a reason for pause at a minimum.
00:08:39.580And more importantly, and as was the case with Iraq, when it comes to the question of Iran's nuclear capabilities, we unfortunately have no reason to trust the U.S. intelligence agency's assessment one way or another.
00:08:51.580They've lied so often and so consistently on everything from Iraq to the COVID lab leak to the fact that they, you know, bombed civilians during the pullout from Afghanistan that no one can trust them.
00:09:02.340In fact, even the president of the United States doesn't seem to trust his own director of national intelligence.
00:09:58.980The other issue is that, like Iraq, Iran has not launched any kind of recent direct attack on the United States.
00:10:05.900And that doesn't mean in itself that we're not justified in launching a preemptive strike.
00:10:09.900It doesn't mean that we have to wait to get hit first.
00:10:11.740But it does make you wonder if this attack was launched primarily for America or primarily for the sake of and at the behest of a country other than America, namely Israel.
00:10:26.500You know, in this case, there are very good reasons to be concerned that we got ourselves in a military conflict for Israel's sake and not our own.
00:10:36.260And that concern becomes especially pronounced when you listen to the kinds of things that our government officials are saying.
00:10:44.220For example, here's State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce just a few weeks ago.
00:10:48.960The pride of being able to be here and do work that facilitates making things better for people and in the greatest country on earth next to Israel.
00:11:01.140It is it's an honor to be able to make a difference and to be able to speak in this regard with an administration that I love so much.
00:11:11.280And I and that I feel genuinely represented by it's it's a real honor.
00:11:17.820Now, it goes without saying or it should go without saying that anyone who thinks that a foreign country is greater than her own should be barred from government service for life.
00:11:27.280This is disqualifying in about a million different ways.
00:11:30.680Now, you could claim that she's being taken out of context so that she didn't mean to say what she said.
00:11:35.340And those are all possibilities, even though her job as a spokeswoman is to speak clearly.
00:11:39.440But to my ear, it sounds a lot like she just said that America is, quote, the greatest country on earth next to Israel.
00:11:45.640And watching footage like this, along with the relentless warmongering on cable news, you know, it's hard not to become more than a little cynical about our reasons for attacking Iran and whether America first was really the guiding principle at play here.
00:12:00.340You know, for my part, I have a position that may not satisfy most people.
00:12:04.020Well, I don't agree with the people claiming that Trump just betrayed his base and started World War Three.
00:12:10.480I mean, at the moment, World War Three is seems like an unlikely outcome, in part because no other nation is rushing to Iran's defense.
00:12:17.980Iran is not a particularly popular country, as it turns out.
00:12:20.600And a lot of their neighbors in the Middle East, aside from Israel, don't want them to have nuclear weapons either.
00:12:26.120Additionally, it's hard to justify the claim that Trump betrayed his base when he has been saying for like 15 years that Iran can't have nukes.
00:12:33.080That's a point that the pro-intervention side brings up a lot.
00:12:35.680And they're right. I concede that point.
00:12:38.660To be sure, if this conflict turns into a years-long quagmire that costs billions of dollars and countless American lives, then Trump will have betrayed his base and sunk his presidency in the process.
00:12:48.800But if this is a one-and-done deal, as he initially indicated, it would be pretty consistent with how he operated in his first term and handled similar sorts of situations.
00:12:58.480But again, it's hard to come to any definitive conclusions at the moment.
00:13:01.940Yesterday, Iran's parliament voted to close the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most important shipping routes for oil in the world.
00:13:07.680But it remains to be seen whether Iran's so-called supreme leader will follow through on that vote, which will almost certainly result in more U.S. military action.
00:13:14.660On the other hand, I also definitely don't agree with the neocons throwing a parade right now, raising the Mission Accomplished banner, and declaring that the Middle East has been fixed and a golden age of peace is upon us.
00:13:29.920Those were Dave Rubin's words, paraphrasing slightly.
00:13:33.300What they're claiming, essentially, is that all it took was a few bombs to fix everything.
00:13:37.980Well, but we've already dropped a lot of bombs.
00:13:40.580So what, the first million bombs didn't do it, but the last 10 did the trick?
00:13:48.500And again, it's way too early, to put it mildly, for those kinds of proclamations.
00:13:54.300Literally 12 hours after the U.S. dropped its bombs, there were legions of commentators on X claiming that the decision's already been vindicated and that those who warned against the move have been exposed as fools.
00:14:04.90012 hours later, like the morning after, you could go on X and you would see, what?
00:14:16.520Because, of course, if a military intervention doesn't result in anything bad within the first 12 hours, that means it won't result in anything bad at all, ever.
00:14:26.520Social media is full of this kind of gloating and gaslighting mere hours after the initial assault.
00:14:31.120Now, again, there are major problems with this line of thinking.
00:14:35.580In particular, there are reports now that the strike didn't remotely affect Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium.
00:14:41.180Both J.D. Vance and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency have said that we don't know precisely where Iran's uranium stockpile is, and there's good reason for that.
00:14:50.820Days before the U.S. bombed Iran, commercial satellite images show that trucks appeared at two of the sites that we hit, most likely to haul some of the uranium away.
00:14:58.500And if that's the case, then we haven't obliterated Iran's nuclear program, as Trump said.
00:15:04.220We've set it back, but we would not have obliterated it in that case.
00:15:08.260And on top of that, of course, these attacks didn't destroy sleeper cells that we're told Iran likely has in this country, nor do they eliminate Iran's ability to launch missiles at U.S. troops in the region or strike Israel, for that matter, etc.
00:15:20.800In other words, this attack probably won't turn into World War III, but the chances that it makes the situation in the Middle East more chaotic, fractured, and therefore dangerous for America and Americans seems relatively high to me.
00:15:36.780I mean, that's the way that these things have played out for the past 40 years at least.
00:15:41.320It's certainly not unreasonable to worry that a pattern established over four decades may continue.
00:15:47.100X is full of right-wing influencers now declaring that their fellow conservatives who have these kinds of concerns aren't real MAGA.
00:15:58.780Even though these are the very concerns that Trump ran on, and that many people in the America First movement, like myself and millions of others, have expressed for years and years.
00:16:09.560Meanwhile, John Bolton, David French, Nikki Haley, Lindsey Graham, Mike Pence, Jonah Goldberg, all support this attack.
00:16:19.040In fact, it's the first thing Trump has done this term that they like.
00:16:24.180Is that how things have, my, how things change?
00:16:26.840Also, taking a few steps back, there seems to be a real disconnect here.
00:16:33.760You know, the same people declaring that Iran is a joke, friendless, isolated, impotent, and therefore we don't need to worry about any reprisals from them.
00:16:42.480Well, these were the ones telling us for the past two weeks that Iran is a clear and present danger to the United States.
00:16:47.180But how dangerous could they have ever really been if a few days of bombs has rendered them as threatening as a blind, limbless tortoise lying upside down on the pavement?
00:16:57.660Now, yes, if Iran had a fully functional ICBM, that would change things.
00:17:01.140But no one's even claiming that Iran was actively in the process of building a nuclear weapon or had established the capacity to launch one, much less if they had any plans to launch one at the United States.
00:17:11.540Now, how will this all play out in the end?
00:17:18.640Well, the truth is that if you're excited for the opportunity to thump your chest and say, I told you so, unfortunately, you're going to have to wait several years.
00:17:28.140Because that's how long it will take for us to know for certain whether Trump's decision on Saturday night was ultimately right or wrong.
00:17:34.320Maybe on the end, it will turn out that Trump's actions made America less secure in the short term, but more secure in the long term.
00:18:18.560And anyone who says that conservatives aren't allowed to or shouldn't disagree with Trump or that it's disloyal for them to voice their concerns when they disagree is not a serious person.
00:18:42.880And again, my take on that question is not satisfying really to any faction, I guess.
00:18:50.240Because no, Israel is not the great Satan who can be blamed for all the world's ills.
00:18:56.980But I also don't think it's our responsibility to bail them out or enter into all of their conflicts.
00:19:03.780And I don't think there's any question that Israel deliberately backed Trump into a corner on Iran.
00:19:10.580They launched this attack on Iran while knowing that they didn't have the capability to finish the job.
00:19:15.300And on this point, although I thought that Trump's address on Saturday night was fine for the most part, there was one part that stood out and not in a good way.
00:19:23.900I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.
00:19:28.720We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before.
00:19:33.520And we've gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel.
00:19:37.820I want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they've done.
00:19:42.220So he says, we've gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel.
00:19:49.340Now, this is probably a more revealing statement than Trump intended.
00:19:53.220Trump's own intelligence community said Iran wasn't actively building a bomb.
00:19:56.960That's what Tulsi Gabbard told Congress.
00:19:59.400And then Israel launched an attack anyway.
00:20:03.020Our State Department responded right away.
00:20:06.040Marco Rubio put out a statement, a very cold statement disavowing any involvement.
00:20:12.220And then a little over a week later, we dropped these bombs.
00:20:15.480And now the president is talking about erasing a threat to Israel.
00:20:18.080I just can't interpret that chain of events as anything but Israel dragging us into something that we didn't initially want to be involved in.
00:20:50.380America should be acting in its own interests to protect its own people.
00:20:54.040It should never do a single thing that harms its own people and its own interests for the sake of some other country's people and interests.
00:21:03.660Now, I'm no peacenik hippie when it comes to using force.
00:21:08.580I just think force should only ever be used when it's used by America for America.
00:21:14.480As I said, I'd love to see the military launch ruthless, devastating strikes on the drug cartels that have killed thousands of Americans for decades.
00:21:31.920Somebody in power should explain that to us as slowly as possible so there's no confusion.
00:21:37.280Drug cartels have killed more Americans than the Iranians ever have, directly or indirectly.
00:21:41.780And the criminal invasion of our country is a more direct and immediate and serious threat to us, to our country, than Iran's nuclear program ever was.
00:23:01.440Now, at the moment, the messaging from the Trump administration isn't encouraging on this point.
00:23:05.640Here's J.D. Vance explaining why this particular intervention in the Middle East is a good idea.
00:23:09.960And the second thing is, Kristen, I certainly empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East.
00:24:00.480And you can debate about George Bush's IQ, but there's no doubt that the people controlling the foreign policy in his administration were extremely intelligent.
00:31:39.260Now, the question is, would Jose himself or Alex, if that's his real name, if that is his real name, would he forego the opportunity to play the self-pity card?
00:31:52.020You know, when he's asked about this name kerfuffle, would he be an adult man and just say, oh, he got my name wrong.
00:32:18.780This is the moment in the script where, you know, he gets to deliver his big emotional monologue, which is what he did on MSNBC over the weekend.
00:32:36.240Look, sadly, it's just an indicator of how petty and unserious this administration is.
00:32:43.980But he's the vice president of the United States.
00:32:45.980Do you think he'd take the situation in Los Angeles more seriously?
00:32:51.540You know, you think maybe he'd take a moment to talk to some of the families who have been impacted, have been terrorized, to feel what's really going on on the ground.
00:33:00.460And you saw him shaking hands with Marines.
00:34:36.060And in any case, of course, this is what the Democrats are latching on to because they are desperate to change the subject from, you know, actually talking about the illegal alien invasion of the country.
00:34:48.320And they are desperate to find their immigrant martyr, their Mexican George Floyd.
00:34:54.500And we've talked about this a lot over the last several months, that this is, you know, they need, this is the only way they know how to operate.
00:35:02.060They need to find their martyr, their cause, right?
00:35:04.280And they were hoping that Kilmar Garcia would be that guy, but that hasn't really worked out for them.
00:35:09.820And so maybe now it can be Jose Padilla.
00:35:13.300They're just, they're just like cycling through candidates until they find one that hits because it's the only move they have.
00:35:20.780The emotional manipulation, the emotional blackmail.
00:36:22.080And by the way, for, for not to backtrack to what we, what, what we've already covered, but for the people who say, oh, we could do both, you know.
00:39:22.840So it turns out that, I guess I could have saved my penguin joke and used it for that clip too.
00:39:28.900I don't know if that guy is Nadler's nephew or what, but strikingly similar.
00:39:34.840This whole idea is actually very sinister.
00:39:38.620If you want to ban anyone from wearing masks, you should ban the rioters from wearing them.
00:39:45.500I mean, I would be in favor of a mask ban in general.
00:39:48.980You know, it's like people wearing masks out in public, going into stores wearing masks and all the rest of it.
00:39:57.660There's real safety concerns behind that, as we've seen.
00:40:01.260But trying to take them away from law enforcement is sinister because they actually wear them for a reason.
00:40:07.220Which is so that, especially now that everything is filmed, so that the leftist militants can't post their pictures all over social media and then try to hunt them down and kill them.
00:40:56.580They can't defund the police, but they can find other ways of demoralizing law enforcement, of disincentivizing good people from entering into the law enforcement field.
00:41:16.360Every time you see a woke DA who refuses to press charges against some violent criminal or a judge who releases the criminal back on the streets,
00:55:19.100It's almost as if there were a lot of primitive tribes that lived in that area back in the day.
00:55:23.180And it's almost as if they all took land from the tribes who were there before them.
00:55:26.740And it's almost as if it's a waste of time to try to appease any of these people because you're only making them more emboldened and more entitled and more annoying.
00:55:34.660And there's another another problem here as well.
00:55:40.220One of the many things that irks me about these kinds of stunts, even though it's happening in Canada, it is funny and we can laugh at it.
00:55:46.660But the part that irks me is that it gives the so-called indigenous people something they didn't earn.
00:55:54.880The only reason that there are paved roads with street signs, not to mention modern cities, is because of the European settlers who came here and brought civilization along with them.
00:56:06.500If the so-called indigenous people want street signs named after them, they should have figured out how to build streets and towns in the first place and write a language.
00:56:18.160What makes the situation all the more galling is that if you look at the current state of British Columbia, they have much bigger problems than catering to the delusional whims of obese Indian activists.
00:56:29.840This is what Vancouver looks like right now.
00:56:33.040This is footage from the YouTube channel Life in Canada by Lucy.
00:56:36.800It was shot this week in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia.
00:56:40.060Block after block, you see tents, homeless people doing drugs, mentally ill vagrants freaking people out.
00:56:45.840But if Canada were run by people who took themselves seriously, by moral men who wanted the best for their citizens, this would be the only thing that they'd be talking about.
00:56:57.940They wouldn't talk about tariffs or Iran.
00:57:00.360They certainly wouldn't talk about random street signs in the suburbs.
00:57:03.540They'd do something about the collapse of their country, which is becoming more and more apparent by the day.
00:57:09.300But Canada's leaders are not interested in averting the collapse of their country.
00:57:13.560They're only interested in accelerating it.
00:57:15.840On the bright side, at least they're giving everyone else in the world something to laugh about in the process.
00:57:19.920And that is why the Canadians who just changed the name of a random street so that it honors a strong Wi-Fi password instead of a great man are today canceled.