00:05:05.980done on the backs of those who are true believers like us
00:05:09.600that volunteer to go over time and time again.
00:05:11.480A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.
00:05:21.780If we waited for them to hit us first after they were attacked by someone else, Israel attacked them, they hit us first, and we waited for them to hit us, we would suffer more casualties and more deaths.
00:05:32.060CENTCOM U.S. military officials confirming three U.S. service members have been killed, five others wounded as part of Operation Epic Fury.
00:05:39.880And sadly, there will likely be more. Before it ends, that's the way it is.
00:05:46.560The director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, has just announced he's resigning.
00:05:52.460Quote, as a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a gold star husband who lost my beloved wife, Shannon, in a war manufactured by Israel,
00:06:00.760I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people, nor justifies the cost of American lives.
00:06:10.580It is unclear how much of an impact this letter will have, given the kind of conspiratorial nature of the letter.
00:06:17.840The fact that he blames Israel, Israeli officials, the American media, the Israel lobby.
00:06:24.400I heard anti-Semitism. I mean, this is a trope that repeats itself throughout history.
00:06:29.360The Jews are in back of everything and maneuvered poor, innocent Donald Trump into doing this.
00:06:35.880What are you doing? You're giving aid and comfort to a lie.
00:06:40.240There was an imminent threat. How much more imminent could you be within two weeks having enough material to make 10 bombs?
00:13:52.940And have you watched as other government employees have leaked multiple documents and information with absolutely no threat of prosecution?
00:14:04.040I have the same access to the media that you do, so I see it happening.
00:14:07.620I don't know specifics of anyone specifically leaking themselves.
00:14:11.960But, yeah, the leaks are in the paper every single day. And I think there's a big distinction between leaking actual top secret information and then leaking almost palace intrigue of who's meeting with who.
00:14:23.940But, yeah, no. So I'm not aware of any specific leaguers. But again, I see all the time in the media.
00:14:30.520Well, that's the other thing. I mean, I would say that, you know, let's just say that you were the leaguer about Mark Levin visiting President Trump at the White House.
00:14:39.840He's not some top national security advisor. He's not some foreign leader. That's not classified information. And by the way, the Andrew Colvett group chat is not classified information either. That's a group chat that many members, pundits and others of the chattering class were a part of and that multiple people had.
00:15:01.360So I just like that. If this is what the leak investigation is about, I can tell you as a lawyer, I don't I don't think it's going anywhere.
00:15:08.620But in any event, do you think they're trying to intimidate you out of being so public in your stance on the Iran war?
00:15:16.320I think it's more of the media game. I mean, they dropped the accusations about the investigation you're referring to right as we were airing or Tucker was airing the interview that he he did with me.
00:15:27.660So I really think it's just a counter-narrative.
00:15:29.920They're trying to say that, hey, obviously,
00:15:31.440Kent's going on big platforms like yours, like Tucker's, et cetera.
00:15:34.840So at the same time, they'll kind of tease out different, you know,
00:15:38.700salacious details of a leak or an investigation.
00:15:54.480So really, this is just an effort for them to steal a narrative and to have us discussing things like the leaks, the investigation, et cetera, as opposed to the main issue, which is why we went to war with Iran.
00:16:16.180It just seems to me you don't intimidate that easily. And it's probably going to take a little bit more than media reports about alleged leak investigations involving non-classified information to scare you. But we'll see. Can I ask you one other question on this? Did you, in your role, did you get along with Kash Patel?
00:16:36.280yeah i actually had a good working relationship with cash look there's um institutional friction
00:16:42.960between organizations in the in the government just like there was when i was in the military
00:16:47.020uh the national counterterrorism center is pretty unique in the fact that they can
00:16:50.740kind of um see what the fbi is doing what the cia is doing it was created after 9-11 to help
00:16:56.160connect the dots so it's somewhat of an oversight function and anytime you have an oversight
00:17:00.960function in government there's going to inherently be friction because we in essence we are kind of
00:17:06.120looking into their case files, we're looking into their operations. And so just a lot of times that
00:17:11.860does develop what I think is a pretty healthy tension. And so if there were times where Cash
00:17:17.000and I disagreed on something, or usually it wasn't even Cash, it was just people at different parts
00:17:22.780of the FBI. If we had a disagreement, it was usually a professional disagreement. And there's
00:17:26.780processes and procedures for kind of hashing all that out. Because it would now be his organization
00:17:33.200that would be looking into you. Of course, none of that will happen if the president tells him
00:17:37.800not to make it happen. And so we'll see just how mad the president may be that you've been
00:17:42.120outspoken. You're not criticizing him personally. You're not criticizing his general policies. It's
00:17:48.300the war in Iran that you're criticizing and suggesting the president was misled in the
00:17:52.960reasoning for doing it, in the alleged justification. But before we get to that,
00:17:56.980let's just talk about how you became a Trump supporter and wound up working in the Trump
00:18:01.940administration. It goes back quite a ways to, I mean, you were obviously a combat veteran. And
00:18:07.600I believe it was back in 2016 when he was running the first time you told Sean Ryan later that it
00:18:14.580was that moment on the stage with Jeb Bush that first, this is February, 2016, that first got
00:18:21.340your attention. We clipped some of it here in SOT3. Watch. Obviously the war in Iraq was a big
00:18:28.420fat mistake. All right. Now you can take it any way you want. And it took it took Jeb Bush. If
00:18:35.020you remember at the beginning of his announcement, when he announced the president, took him five
00:18:39.240days. He went back. It was a mistake. It wasn't a mistake. Took him five days before his people
00:18:44.920told him what to say. And he ultimately said it was a mistake. The war in Iraq, we spent two
00:18:50.720trillion dollars, thousands of lives. We don't even have it. Iran is taking over Iraq with the
00:18:55.940second largest oil reserves in the world. Obviously, it was a mistake. What did that mean to you?
00:19:02.580It was a breath of fresh air. I mean, I said, finally, like someone, someone who has a major
00:19:07.380political platform, an actual shot at the at the White House has been saying what the guys on the
00:19:13.540ground had been saying for years. I was pretty disenfranchised after the Bush years with the
00:19:19.900Republican Party, became a Ron Paul supporter. And it actually basically was, you know,
00:19:24.840cautiously optimistic i didn't vote for obama when he came in and said that he wanted to end
00:19:28.800the wars you know but i saw in short order that obama wasn't serious about that either and so i
00:19:33.020didn't think that we really had a choice in political party i thought there was actually
00:19:36.740no difference and then trump came on in south carolina of all places you know heavily uh a lot
00:19:42.440of veterans there in the crowd and he said the thing he said that we never should have gone to
00:19:46.640war iraq he said it was based on lies and for me i was just like i knew who trump was like most
00:19:51.940Americans do. I just knew he had like a reality TV show essentially. And I was like, man, the guy
00:19:57.360from The Apprentice just laid out our problems with our foreign policy more succinctly than any
00:20:02.740of the so-called experts that I've ever heard. So that made me a Trump supporter like in that
00:20:06.600moment. I mean, that moment with Jeb Bush was so crazy because I was the one who interviewed him
00:20:12.500when he couldn't spit out the answer about whether the Iraq war was a mistake. And it was supposed to
00:20:17.580be one of those sort of puff piece interviews launching his presidential campaign. It was such
00:20:21.480a basic question like, you know, was the Iraq war a mistake? It was his brother's war. He couldn't
00:20:26.840answer it. Meanwhile, there's this, you know, real estate guy with perfect moral clarity on it. So
00:20:31.360I'm not surprised to you it stood out. It stood out to me too at the time. We noticed in that
00:20:38.060setup piece that you met President Trump in person at Dover when the remains of your wife
00:20:44.940were returned stateside after she was killed while in service for the country in Syria.
00:20:51.480She was the mother of your two young boys. She was deployed at a time right after they'd been born. Both of you had real hesitations about it, but she felt it was her duty to go. And she did go. And then tragically, she was killed by an ISIS suicide bomber.
00:21:07.660So, Joe, when you saw President Trump at Dover, my understanding is you had a private conversation with him. Can you tell us about that?
00:21:15.100yeah so um my late wife was killed about a month after president trump attempted to get our troops
00:21:21.900out of syria the first time so the territorial uh isis caliphate was defeated towards the end of
00:21:27.8402018 and that's when president trump sent out a very famous tweet and started giving orders
00:21:32.520that hey we accomplished our military objectives we're not going to stay here forever we're not
00:21:36.840going to get further entrenched we're going to get our troops out so she she and her uh her team
00:21:41.520They were supposed to be pulled out of Syria on Christmas Eve in 2018.
00:21:46.140And the rest is, I think, pretty well-known history.
00:21:48.660The administrative state, the bureaucrats, they drug their feet.
00:21:52.600They leaked to the media why this was a horrible idea.
00:21:55.680And so they created this stall where our troops were still in Syria.
00:21:59.980And she was killed about a month after in January of 2019.
00:22:03.320And so being in the CIA at the time, I had a front row seat to seeing kind of the behind
00:22:08.200the scenes of how the bureaucrats were dragging their feet and thwarting President Trump.
00:22:13.060And so by the time she was killed and we were waiting for her remains to return to Dover,
00:22:19.060I really wanted to actually just speak with the president.
00:22:21.640I didn't think I'd get the opportunity.
00:22:24.680I just figured he was going to be there essentially to see the coffins off the plane.
00:22:29.360But before the plane arrived, his staffers came and said, hey, if you'd like to meet
00:22:33.620with the president, he'll meet with you.
00:22:34.780and he shannon was killed with uh with three other great americans john farmer um scotty
00:22:41.940warts and gadir ta and so president trump met with all the families individually when i got
00:22:46.000an opportunity to meet with president trump again it was just us i thought there'd be you know
00:22:49.960secret service detail or something like that but it was it was him and i in the room and he was he
00:22:53.740was very um very gracious very sympathetic strong leader i'd been you know in combat most of my
00:22:59.920adult life at that time. And I'd seen leaders react in different ways. And President Trump,
00:23:04.600to me, seemed like he legitimately cared. He did not take lightly the fact that these individuals
00:23:10.720died under his command. And I just wanted to tell him a very simple message that, hey,
00:23:15.900your instincts, what you're trying to implement, you're correct, but you're actually being
00:23:19.760thwarted. And I got an opportunity to kind of deliver that in a shorthand way. And then later
00:23:26.460on, got an opportunity to sit down with Jerry Kushner and some others several months on,
00:23:32.300several months after that, and to kind of flesh out the way I viewed President Trump's foreign
00:23:37.100policy. And that kind of started my relationship with the Trump administration. But President
00:23:43.040Trump's, as you said, moral clarity on how and why we use force and whether or not it's in the
00:23:48.900American people's interest, I think it's something that he's always understood at a very instinctual
00:23:53.320level. And I always really, truly respected and appreciated that about him. And I still do to this
00:23:58.780day. Which is why it had to be pretty shocking to you when he launched the war in Iran.
00:24:07.460It was, but I saw a lot of lead up, especially in the lead up to the 12-day war, Operation
00:24:13.760Midnight Hammer. And then just seeing the way that a lot of key advisors to the President Trump,
00:24:21.040both informal and formal. And then the media ecosystem created kind of around President Trump
00:24:28.320to put in different ideas that, you know, Iran couldn't have any enrichment and to make it seem
00:24:33.900imminent that we had to go to war with Iran. So I kind of saw this happening. I stayed in the
00:24:40.620fight as long as I could to try and influence that myself. And I got to the point where the
00:24:46.780The war had started once, so the 12-day war, when Operation Midnight Hammer happened, we had a clear military objective there, which was to destroy the nuclear facilities.
00:24:54.540So I was skeptical of it because I said, hey, look, even if we destroy the nuclear facilities, the Israelis, who have a completely different strategic objective than us, they're going to come back to us here in a couple months, and they're going to tell us why we need to go take down the regime.
00:25:08.760knowing that taking down the regime was not in our vital national security interest and actually
00:25:13.860would make things far worse and start a larger war. That was my major concern. And so when
00:25:19.140when I saw things heat back up this this summer, this fall in the lead up to where we are now,
00:25:26.400I had a feeling that it could end up this way. So I wasn't shocked when it happened because I saw
00:25:34.280the bubble being created around president trump um and so that's that's why i felt like my only
00:25:39.440means of recourse my only means of taking action was to do so from the outside there's so much i
00:25:46.920want to get to uh on what you said can you just you mentioned that you were in the cia which we
00:25:51.880didn't really do your resume but can you just tell us the branches of the military you were in and
00:25:56.040then ultimately the cia sure uh i was in the army for for my entire 20 years i came in as an enlisted
00:26:02.520infantrymen in 1998 went uh went right to the selection process to become a ranger to be a
00:26:08.660member of the 75th ranger regiment i was there for about three years i was actually in special
00:26:13.240forces selection to become a green beret uh when the attacks september 11th happened once i finished
00:26:18.580the the training it takes about a year and a half to earn your green beret um i went to fifth special
00:26:23.420forces group and then uh the iraq war had already kicked off and so for basically from 2003 until
00:26:30.7402011, I would spend six to eight months a year in Iraq, various locations, primarily Baghdad,
00:26:38.240Mosul, fought in the Battle of Jaffa, fought in the Second Battle of Fallujah, fought in
00:26:42.340Tal Afar. And then in 2011, 2010, I spent some time in Yemen. That was 2010 was the only year
00:26:48.040I didn't go to Iraq. I was in Yemen for about eight months doing some other operations with
00:26:53.060Special Forces. 2011 was back in Iraq. We actually withdrew the first time. After that,
00:26:59.760I went to a selection process for a very unique special operations unit, and that's where I met
00:27:05.160my late wife, Shannon. I deployed back to Iraq for the counter-ISIS fight, deployed another time to
00:27:10.980Yemen, and then decided to do, and this is actually pretty typical for guys with my resume and
00:27:16.660background, decided at the 20-year mark to leave the military, because basically if you hang out
00:27:22.580in the military for too long, they'll eventually put you behind a desk, and I had no interest in
00:27:25.580that. And so I transitioned over into being a CIA current military operations officer
00:27:29.900for the CIA for about a year until my late wife was killed.
00:27:34.060Wow. How old were you when Shannon died?
00:27:37.260I was 39. Actually, I hadn't even turned 39 yet, so I was still 38.
00:27:49.280Oh, my God. That's awful, Joe. I'm so sorry. So sorry for your loss and so grateful for
00:27:55.120your service, too. You've given a lot, a lot, more than anyone should have to to this country.
00:28:00.920So going back just a bit, when you met with President Trump at Dover, and it's now become
00:28:08.560known that you told your wife, Shannon, before she died, quote, don't be the last person to die
00:28:13.080in a conflict, in a war that our entire country's already forgotten about. And it just occurs to me
00:28:19.200that you're sitting there running the counterterrorism center. As I tried to explain to
00:28:22.400my kids when I was telling them that you and I were going to sit together today. I'm like,
00:28:25.100he's like the Jack Bauer of our government. He's running the counterterrorism, which they
00:28:30.380understood. And you're really doing a lot to protect the country from some terrorist threats
00:28:37.420that linger as a result of earlier wars we've been in. So you have a front row seat to the
00:28:43.600ongoing danger these wars can pose to the homeland. You suffered the consequences of war
00:28:49.180firsthand in a very personal way. You warned your wife in this very profound and prophetic way,
00:28:56.720and then she was indeed killed. And so now we talked about just briefly your concerns about
00:29:01.920the Iran war and how the president was being misled, and yet we do it. We go ahead and we do
00:29:05.760it. It's all guns blazing. And so for those two weeks before you resigned, what was going through
00:29:12.420your head? In the two weeks, once the war kicked off, I was really concerned, obviously, that we're
00:29:21.020going to get pulled further in. And I was doing everything I could to attempt to influence the
00:29:25.160situation to find a potential off-ramp to give the president a victory that we could declare
00:29:30.320so that he could say, hey, just like in Midnight Hammer, we conducted this strike,
00:29:35.500we took out their ballistic missile capability, we killed X amount of IRGC officers, and now is
00:29:41.520a good time for us to leave um those unfortunately i wasn't successful in that and i just saw the way
00:29:48.380that information was flowing and it was frustrating um and then also just in terms of where i was with
00:29:55.360with my morals um you know i probably about two decades ago on my third deployment um i just
00:30:01.820remember as i was realizing that we were allowed to to get into iraq um i just remember thinking
00:30:06.900man i really wish a lot of the vietnam veterans uh especially the ones who are still in government
00:30:11.040like Colin Powell had spoken up and said, hey, you know what? We've seen this before. We have
00:30:15.320enough experience to know that this is not the right path for our country and to really speak
00:30:19.800up. And I said to myself, you know, two plus decades ago, and this is a big reason why I
00:30:23.140kind of branched my military career the way I did with a heavy intelligence side. So that at some
00:30:29.540point I could be the one that says like, actually, hey, I know what the ground truth is and we should
00:30:34.620not be here. And so that was ringing heavily in my ears that I had made this promise to myself
00:30:40.500that, hey, if I ever could influence whether or not young Americans go off to fight and die in a
00:30:46.020war that's not in our vital national security interest, that I would speak up and I would do
00:30:49.380the right thing. Because for me, I'm hardwired just to be in a position of constant duty and
00:30:56.900constant service. So the easiest thing for me to have done would have been to stay at the National
00:31:01.940Counterterrorism Center and to soldier on. And to me, I just thought to myself and I truly felt
00:31:06.600called by God that God didn't put me in this position right now just to soldier on again.
00:31:11.500I did 20 plus years of soldiering on. And look what that got my family. Look what that got so
00:31:17.060many other families. And look what that got our country. And so to me, it was challenging. It was
00:31:22.440a tough two weeks. But at the end of it, by I guess last weekend at this point, it was crystal
00:31:27.460clear to me. And I felt the calm. And I felt that I was exactly where I needed to be. And I knew that
00:31:32.140I knew that I had to leave and I knew that I had to do so in a public way, but in a way that could still hopefully shape policy and take us off the trajectory that we're on now.
00:31:43.620Yeah, let's talk about the publicness of it for a second, because there's been a lot of pushback on, you know, should you've written the letter?
00:31:51.840Should you have been so public with your reasoning, critical of the president?
00:31:55.600We could go with a number of different commentators.
00:31:58.040But there's a guy, former DOD Ezra Cohen online, who put it pretty succinctly.
00:32:09.500Once the commander in chief makes his decision, salute and move out.
00:32:13.420If you cannot execute the decision, you must resign and do so silently.
00:32:17.040Respect the weight of the president's responsibility, which was given to him by the people.
00:32:22.020Do not undermine his ability to carry out his responsibility as commander in chief.
00:32:25.980I've heard a lot of vets say that, you know, that you have an obligation not to undermine the commander in chief in the middle of a war that has now begun.
00:32:35.060And that that's what they the problem they have with your letter, even if they do share your sentiments, sentiments about the actual war.
00:32:43.340I totally understand where they're coming from. And for many years, I felt the exact same way.
00:32:48.180But again, look, 20 plus years of veterans knowing better and being quiet because we're good soldiers, that got us to this point.
00:32:57.300And so to just repeat the same mistakes again, I might as well have just kept my my nice position in my job and just kind of soldiered on that way.
00:33:06.800But for me, if I was going to leave, I wanted to make it very clear why I was leaving, not just like, hey, from a moral standpoint,
00:33:14.100But also, I think our country is being led down the wrong path.
00:33:18.580I think our government was heavily influenced and our hand was forced by a foreign government.
00:33:24.200I think it's really important when people are in positions of power and responsibility and authority to speak truth to power and to actually tell the American people what's going on.
00:33:33.260And I totally understand that criticism.
00:33:37.120And I really want to argue with it to a point.
00:33:39.700I just have to say where I'm at in my life experiences and what I feel morally called to do.
00:33:45.820If I was still back in the military, that would very much be my sentiment.
00:33:50.220If I was still just a normal, regular CIA officer, that would be, I think, the right course to take.
00:33:56.720But in my position as a political appointee and understanding that our hand was indeed forced to get into this war, I felt it would be incomplete.
00:34:06.120I'd be falling short of my duties if I had just quietly and silently resigned.
00:34:10.440I mean, not to mention a gold star husband and dad.
00:34:15.040I just feel like when you've sacrificed as much as you have for the country in war,
00:34:20.380you have every right to say how you feel.
00:34:22.780I just feel like you've gotten the national conversation going around this war
00:34:28.520in a way that's been, I mean, pretty important and more serious
00:34:33.020and harder to disregard than it was the previous two weeks.
00:34:36.940So personally, I'm very thankful to you for doing what you did.
00:34:39.160I think it was actually yet another act of courage. And I wish people would stop attacking
00:34:44.240you for it. I mean, as you've seen, anybody who's opposing this war is getting attacked,
00:34:50.080getting threatened. Tucker came out saying the CIA is allegedly investigating him for criminal
00:34:56.980charges, maybe under the Foreign Registration Act. It's ridiculous. The president was suggesting
00:35:04.560that Tucker and yours truly, we're not going to have any viewers now. We're going to lose all of
00:35:08.840our influence. You know, there's been nonstop sort of threatening and attacks against people
00:35:15.020who are outspoken against the war. So the more people who do it, the tougher it's going to be
00:35:20.860for them. They can't destroy everyone. They can't put us all in jail or destroy all of our
00:35:25.760livelihoods. So in any event, I'm grateful to you for it. Let's talk about what was in the letter
00:35:30.920because you're talking about, you know, repeatedly on how we were manipulated into this, how President
00:35:35.460Trump was manipulated into this. And that you mentioned in your resignation letter, you blame
00:35:40.740two sources, Israel and media figures. So can you expand on that? Certainly. So early on in
00:35:49.120this administration, I believe President Trump was the situation that we were in with Iran.
00:35:55.560In President Trump's first administration, I think his Iran policy, as I say later on in the
00:36:00.520letter, was exactly where we needed to be. And it was something that only President Trump could
00:36:04.420implement. When we were threatened, when we were attacked, President Trump took significant
00:36:08.040strikes. He killed the Iranian proxy terror master Qasem Soleimani, somebody who literally
00:36:13.240walked all over Obama, walked all over George Bush, killed Americans. Trump killed him,
00:36:19.080took him off the battlefield, but then restrained the military from getting sucked into a broader
00:36:23.900conflict with Iran, which in my opinion is exactly what Iran wanted, because that would
00:36:29.720create a rally around the flag phenomenon inside Iran, as we're seeing right now. So President
00:36:35.020Trump got that right. And then he leveraged the weight of the American economic sanctions against
00:36:39.640Iran. And just a few months ago, I think two months ago, we saw protesters on the streets,
00:36:44.800basically because of the cost of living and the economic ramifications. And those protesters
00:36:48.800were protesting against the regime that we would like to see go. So President Trump's policy on
00:36:55.580Iran actually was working. He had to correct the ship pretty heavily because Biden gave Iran a
00:37:00.720bunch of money back, and that's why their proxies were so emboldened. But at the beginning of
00:37:04.340President Trump's second administration, especially in the lead up to the 12-day war,
00:37:09.800we saw a combination of things. And I think the most significant thing that the Israelis and their
00:37:15.360advocates and their lobbyists here in America were able to do that got us to the point we're at right
00:37:19.540now is they wanted to move the goalposts. They wanted to move President Trump's red line from
00:37:25.380saying Iran can't have a nuclear weapon to Iran can't have any nuclear enrichment. And this kind
00:37:31.500of seems technical. It seems like semantics. However, President Trump, it's very important.
00:37:37.120President Trump and really the former Ayatollah, the former Supreme Leader,
00:37:42.020they were in agreement that Iran could not have a nuclear weapon. President Trump always said,
00:37:46.500Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. As a matter of fact, you know, President Trump will consistently
00:37:50.940say, I think, to some of his detractors in this war, well, Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. And
00:37:55.940all of us agree with that. And as a matter of fact, the Iranians, actually their former Supreme
00:38:00.020Leader, actually agreed with that. And he had a faithful, a religious ruling, and Iran is a
00:38:05.360clergy, essentially, a religious ruling against developing a nuclear weapon. And this is a very,
00:38:11.240I think, pragmatic policy for the Iranians to have. They saw what happened to Muammar Qaddafi
00:38:17.580in Libya when you say, hey, I won't have any nuclear material. I won't pursue nuclear weapons
00:38:22.460at all. Well, then you're vulnerable to a regime change war like the United States launched against
00:38:27.660Gaddafi and he was eventually killed in a very gruesome way by his own people. Libya is now
00:38:33.400destabilized. For a while, it was a breeding ground for ISIS and other terror. But if you do
00:38:38.820what Saddam Hussein did and you kind of bluff and you say, well, maybe I have a nuclear weapon,
00:38:42.640I have a nuclear weapon, et cetera, then you're going to get the Saddam Hussein treatment and
00:38:46.740then your country's going to be destabilized and going to be killed. So what the Iranians had
00:38:49.580was they had a very pragmatic approach. They said, we're not going to develop, we have a
00:38:53.360religious ruling against developing a nuclear weapon, yet we will have some degree of enrichment
00:38:58.600so we could develop a nuclear weapon if we wanted to. And that fatwa, that state right there,
00:39:04.720had held since 2004. And we had no indications, no intelligence that said that that fatwa would
00:39:11.420be lifted. Now, the Iranians wanted to have some enrichment, again, so they had the capability.
00:39:15.820Now, that puts President Trump and the Iranian leadership in a place where they can actually get to the negotiating table, because they both agree on the fundamental premise that Iran's not going to have a nuclear weapon.
00:39:26.840That concept right there is a major threat to the Israelis' stated goal.
00:39:32.040The Israelis' stated goal is to take down the Ayatollah's regime at all costs.
00:39:37.640And I'm not saying that that's a good thing, that's a bad thing.
00:39:39.760if the Israelis want to pursue that as their own foreign policy, fine, then let Israel do that on
00:39:45.420their own. That is not the U.S. foreign policy. That's not actually our stated goal. So the
00:39:50.320Israelis then said they used their supporters in the media, you know, Mark Levin being one of them,
00:39:57.100the foundation for the defense of democracy, as a think tank, and a lot of their media surrogates
00:40:00.760who write op-eds in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, etc., to say
00:40:05.840the US policy actually is no nuclear enrichment. And if you go back to the first Trump administration,
00:40:12.020the only person who said no enrichment, zero enrichment was Mike Pompeo. But through the
00:40:16.560ecosystem of the media saying, no, no, the policy is no enrichment, because the second they can
00:40:21.380enrich, they can sprint to a bomb, which is patently false, because the Iranians had the
00:40:27.100capability to enrich and they had not yet actually developed a nuclear weapon. Because we look at two
00:40:32.320main things in intelligence, capability and intent. Just because an adversary has a capability
00:40:37.040to do something doesn't mean they have the intent and vice versa. You know, there's all kinds of
00:40:42.600crazies out there saying they're going to take down America, but they have no actual capability
00:40:45.700to do so. So the Iranians had maybe some components of the capability, but they did not have the
00:40:52.140intent. And so through the media ecosystem, and then also through a lot of senior ranking Israeli
00:40:58.380officials who would come and have formal and informal engagements with members of President
00:41:03.200Trump's team and President Trump himself, they would all say no enrichment. Meanwhile, Steve
00:41:08.020Wyckoff, a very skilled and I think a very pure hearted negotiator, was engaged in very, very
00:41:13.900serious negotiations prior to the 12 day war where they were discussing enrichment levels. They were
00:41:18.540discussing how there could be monitoring of the enrichment. And so in my opinion, we were on a
00:41:24.000pathway to actually getting a deal with Iran, which actually would have been great for America,
00:41:30.040would have been great for the region. This is what the GCC countries that are critical for
00:41:33.540energy exports in the world economy, this is what they wanted as well. But this ran counter to what
00:41:38.720the Israelis wanted. And so the Israelis were very successful. Just to add to that, the former,
00:41:43.240the foreign minister of Oman, who was mediating the latest round of negotiations, said they were
00:41:47.700making serious progress. The UK's national security advisor, Jonathan Powell, agreed he was
00:41:52.660there in the last round. These are two outside objective observers of the negotiation saying,
00:41:58.700actually, they were doing quite well. We were on our way toward an agreement when we declared them
00:42:04.240at an impasse and started to bomb Iran. And obviously, the president's got a different
00:42:10.680story. He's saying, it's not true. I felt like they were tapping us along. And they were never
00:42:16.780going to give us what we wanted. And of course, what we were wanting was zero enrichment, which
00:42:22.020was, I mean, it was an extreme demand. The one that Iran was never going to agree to. But in
00:42:26.540any event, they were trying to have a negotiation. And the president now says, in my judgment,
00:42:33.460there was an imminent attack. We were about to be attacked. And now they've expanded it to,
00:42:38.500they were within a couple of weeks of having 10 nuclear bombs. I mean, now, Joe, just for the
00:42:43.760audience's sake, we went back and looked. They were saying that Iran was within weeks of getting
00:42:48.620nine nuclear bombs right before we bombed them in June of this past summer. And so then we
00:42:55.660eviscerated their nuclear facilities. We said that we eviscerated them. And that was the end
00:43:03.300of that. It was supposed to be this mission accomplished moment. We had wiped out their
00:43:07.120nuclear facilities. We were good to go. And now Lindsey Graham wants us to believe that they were
00:43:11.800once again, within two weeks of having 10 nuclear bombs. And the president himself also says the
00:43:18.860threat was imminent. People were going to die if we didn't do what we did. I mean, just tell me
00:43:23.780flat out, do you believe that? Well, in terms of the imminent threat, I mean, it's pretty key what
00:43:30.520the president says and the words that he uses. And Marco Rubio, I think in your opening statement
00:43:36.180at your opening clips there, he explained it very accurately. He said it was imminent in the sense
00:43:42.240that the Israelis were going to attack. And once the Israelis attacked, there was likely going to
00:43:48.520be an Iranian response against our bases and our troops in the region. Well, the only imminent
00:43:55.040attack in that equation, as outlined, not by me, but by the Secretary of State, is the Israelis
00:44:01.460attacking the Iranians and the Iranians reacting. So if we wanted to prevent that,
00:44:07.040the key part of that equation is stopping the Israelis from attacking so that we can continue
00:44:11.260to negotiate. Or we could at least set the conditions favorable to us. We could have gotten
00:44:16.300more troops out of the region. We could have postured more forces. But instead, we let this
00:44:20.300country, Israel, who has a different strategic objective than us, that we pay an exorbitant
00:44:24.960amount for their defense and for their military capabilities, dictate our timeline and force our
00:44:30.500hand. And that's where I had a major issue with the trajectory of the war. In terms of could they
00:44:36.860have developed 10 bombs? I mean, I think for probably most of our adult lives, we've had
00:44:42.000Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, but primarily Netanyahu, tell us for the last 20
00:44:47.000plus years that Iran is minutes away from getting a nuclear weapon. And again, because of the
00:44:51.880self-imposed restraints that they have, they've proven over time that they were not on the pathway
00:44:57.620to getting a nuclear weapon so i mean look at the end of the day it's lindsey graham i just don't
00:45:03.520know who takes lindsey graham seriously at this point um that's why he's out there trying to
00:45:07.880unfortunately the answer is president trump i mean that's the sad thing unfortunately yeah i do want
00:45:13.620to say two things um telsey gabbard testified this week before congress that the u.s intelligence
00:45:18.800community assessed that iran was not rebuilding its nuclear enrichment capabilities following
00:45:24.620the June attack. She stuck by the president's line that those facilities were obliterated,
00:45:30.440their capabilities were obliterated thanks to the June strike. So she says Iran was not
00:45:36.000rebuilding its nuclear enrichment capabilities following that attack. In 2025, the DIA issued
00:45:43.340a report saying Iran is at least 10 years away from producing an ICBM because now they switched
00:45:47.820to, well, we couldn't let them have an intercontinental ballistic missile that could
00:45:52.620have hit the United States. Our own defense intelligence agency says they were at least
00:45:56.82010 years away from doing that, something they reiterated in 2026. However, I'll say this,
00:46:02.840the IAEA, that's the International Atomic Energy Association that keeps an eye on Iran,
00:46:08.660they said Iran was enriching to 60% and that no nation that just wants nuclear energy for just
00:46:16.160energy purposes or enrichment for energy purposes would enrich to that level. So what do you make
00:46:22.020that i trust the u.s intelligence community i mean look the u.s intelligence community assessments
00:46:27.140that were coming out on iran that's 18 different agencies that have to chop on this so getting the
00:46:32.50018 intelligence agencies to agree on anything it's very challenging it is a very um laborious
00:46:39.780and it's sometimes a very intense process of coordination and having people argue their cases
00:46:45.220when you have the 18 intelligence agencies saying without a doubt that iran is not working towards
00:46:49.700a nuclear weapon and the Defense Intelligence Agency doing battle damage assessment, which
00:46:54.900is what the DIA really specializes in, is having these military-based assessments, that's
00:47:01.160Being influenced by the IAEA or by another government, Israel in this case, saying like,
00:47:05.920oh no, even though you conducted Midnight Hammer and your 18 intelligence agencies say
00:47:10.860that their nuclear capability is gone, they're still somehow digging out from the rubble
00:47:17.500and they're going to be able to assemble 10 bombs in two weeks.
00:47:20.420Again, sorry, I'm going with what the director of national intelligence said,
00:47:24.780and she's saying that based on the research and the analysis
00:47:28.540and the rigorous debate of 18 intelligence agencies.
00:47:32.780Joe, it seems like Netanyahu went to President Trump and said,
00:47:36.460you know, they'd been debating this for some time.
00:47:38.140He'd been making his case seven times in his visits to the White House this past year.
00:47:42.580Obviously, Iran, I mean, Israel wanted regime change,
00:47:45.740and President Trump was kicking that around.
00:47:47.500He felt like Iran had taken out a hit on him. He believed that. Whether it's in fact true, we're not entirely sure. But he believed that. President Trump did. And it sounds to me like Netanyahu went in there and said, look, Mr. Trump, the Ayatollah is going to be sitting above ground this coming Saturday with a bunch of his top lieutenants.
00:48:07.600you have the chance to take out the guy who tried to take you out, as Trump would say in the week
00:48:12.980after, I got him before he got me. And we can cut off the head of this evil snake and you'll be a
00:48:19.840hero because these people who protested in the street will praise you. And kind of what would
00:48:25.840happen after that doesn't seem to necessarily have been well thought out because I don't know
00:48:30.200how many IRGCs there are, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, but it seems in the tens of thousands,
00:48:35.900and they remain loyal to the regime and they aren't stepping aside and they're armed and
00:48:40.800those protesters aren't. And to me, it just seemed too tempting to President Trump to take out the
00:48:45.880Ayatollah when Netanyahu had good intelligence that he would be gettable. What do you think of
00:48:51.220that? Yeah, I think Netanyahu and a lot of his allies and then echoed in the media again. So
00:48:58.920this is kind of the game that the Israelis run and they're very sophisticated and they're pretty
00:49:03.760effective at it. At the same time, they will have official engagements such as with Netanyahu,
00:49:09.680Ron Dermer, other Israeli intelligence and defense officials have engagements with their
00:49:14.180American counterparts. And they will say something to the effect of what you just said,
00:49:18.200or hey, Iran can't have any kind of enrichment. They'll get their talking point out there.
00:49:22.000President Trump will hear that in official engagements. And then they will make sure
00:49:25.960that Mark Levin, you know, other pro-Israel figures in the media will say the exact same
00:49:32.380Fox News, General Jack Keene of Fox News, that's been documented by the journal that they were in there.
00:49:40.440No, exactly. And so, you know, President Trump will then be kind of put in this echo chamber where he is hearing the same thing over and over again.
00:49:48.400And there was a pretty concerted effort. And I don't want to get any names. I don't want this to turn into any kind of palace intrigue.
00:49:53.720But after the 12-day war, there was a pretty concerted effort, I think, to cut out a lot of the dissenting voices from a discussion on what we're going to do next.
00:50:02.120And so I very much felt that in terms of decision making around Iran, the president was isolated.
00:50:09.000And so he was just hearing that echo chamber.
00:50:11.240And another key component of that, too, is to rush the timeline.
00:50:14.060You have to rush him because if he has time to think about the decisions that he's making, then he's probably going to get he's probably going to search for alternative opinions on it.
00:50:22.260He's probably going to see what the status and negotiations are.
00:50:25.120And so the Israelis did an effective job of pressuring him and saying that you have to do it now.
00:50:31.160And potentially it was what you laid out, that the Ayatollah would be above ground.
00:50:36.020He doesn't think you're going to hit right now, et cetera.
00:50:37.680I don't know if that's specifically the case, but whatever argument they used, the effect
00:50:42.620was that President Trump was then led to believe that if he took action now, it would be quick
00:50:49.980This whole thing would just be quick and easy, and we'd be done with it.
00:50:53.000And none of us in the IC assessed that that would be the case at all.
00:50:57.740We assessed for a very long time, and this is publicly available.
00:51:00.500This is pretty much just common sense that if you struck the Ayatollah, if you struck the IRGC and there was a concerted effort by America and Israel to do a regime change inside of Iran, that actually would have the reverse effect, that even some of the dissidents and people who weren't happy with the current regime would rally around the flag, which to me, I think is just common sense.
00:51:21.180Like, I didn't support Biden, I didn't support Obama, but I was in the military under Obama.
00:51:27.260And if you attacked my country, I would saddle up in a heartbeat to defend against a foreign invader.
00:51:32.560So, yes, I think that's very much what I believe happened, that his decision-making space was taken away.
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00:55:53.760There was a huge National Security Council process that was taking place.
00:55:57.540And there was a lot, again, there was a lot of dissenting voices.
00:55:59.500There was a lot of what I viewed as very, very healthy and productive conversations
00:56:03.540to give the president a realistic look at what his options are
00:56:06.420and what the ramification for those options would be.
00:56:10.040Post-Midnight Hammer, that process played out completely differently.
00:56:15.320Now, obviously, they can say that I was cut out of the meetings,
00:56:18.560and maybe I was cut out of the meetings,
00:56:19.760but I just didn't see a robust debate taking place at that deputies level,
00:56:26.100at that National Security Council level.
00:56:28.280I think you really just had a lot of key policymakers at the cabinet level
00:56:32.400that were around President Trump. And that's the president's prerogative, if that's what he truly
00:56:36.940wanted. However, I think a lot of those key decision makers were also heavily influenced,
00:56:42.920not necessarily by the intelligence coming out of the 18 intelligence agencies, the U.S.
00:56:47.420intelligence agencies. I think they were also heavily influenced by a lot of these Israeli
00:56:51.560officials who were coming directly to them. And I think because they wanted to so tightly
00:56:56.260compartmentalize the president's circle that he didn't get a chance to hear any dissenting voices.
00:57:02.080And I understand, you know, I like Caroline. I think she's very good at her job. So she's got to come in and say this and refute what I'm saying. But I think if you look at what's publicly available, if you just look at the night that the operation launched, you look at who was in the White House Situation Room and then who was down in Mar-a-Lago with the president.
00:57:20.840They had, you know, an entire group, a small group that was down there just with the president while you had the DNI, the vice president, other key members of the cabinet, the intelligence community who were, you know, far away from those decisions that were being made.
00:57:38.300And again, look, I know a lot of folks are going to come back out and say, no, you know what you're talking about, that they were separated for a tactical reason, strategic reason.
00:57:45.660But I think the imagery that came out of that night kind of showed you what the president's tight circle was versus some other folks who may have had the ability to offer the president a different perspective.
00:57:59.160Well, I mean, it's not a mystery to anybody that Tulsi is against starting new Middle East wars.
00:58:06.800I mean, she said that repeatedly, mostly prior to becoming DNI, but that's no mystery.
00:58:12.820And J.D. Vance is definitely more representative of the more isolationist, non-interventionalist wing of the Republican Party,
00:58:19.240but so far has been supportive of his boss, the president of the United States.
00:58:24.180And he's been backing, yes, imminent threat.
00:58:27.020And Tulsi, at her testimony this week, said only the president can determine whether there was an imminent threat.
00:58:31.860But then, of course, went on to say, we assessed Iran was not rebuilding its nuclear enrichment capabilities following the June attack, that they'd been obliterated.
00:58:39.940So, I mean, I know that you actually, before you resigned to the president, met with Tulsi and used to work for Tulsi.
00:58:45.960I mean, you kind of worked for her in a way because she's DNI, but used to, I think you were her chief of staff for a time.
00:58:54.160While I was waiting for confirmation from the Senate, I was her chief of staff.
00:58:56.820Okay, so you work for Tulsi. And my understanding is you and she went in and you met with Vice President Vance prior to your resignation that you submitted to Trump directly. And I know you spoke to the president too. But can you tell us anything about that? I don't want you to violate, you know, confidences, but can you tell us anything about that meeting with Tulsi and JD?
00:59:14.560i think it's better if i don't get into details like i i view both of them as very strong leaders
00:59:20.700and before i submitted my resignation with tulsi as you know um as a senate confirmed presidential
00:59:27.640appointee you have to resign and you technically report directly to the president um but i kind
00:59:33.180of had a dual track national counterterrorism center falls under odni so tulsi was my my boss
00:59:38.540day-to-day so obviously her and i discussed my resignation ahead of time i didn't want her to
00:59:43.360be blindsided um and then the vice president as well who's been um just you know a personal friend
00:59:50.000uh prior to him being the vice president once he became the vice president obviously our
00:59:53.640relationship changed um but i felt it was proper to at least say um to my chain of command hey if
00:59:59.280you guys want me if you'll give me the opportunity i will i will deliver this letter directly to the
01:00:03.120president of the united states um and so the vice president said hey let's let's sit down let's let's
01:00:07.900chat and you can deliver the letter uh to me and then i got a phone call from the president later
01:00:11.460on that evening before I resign. But I don't want to get too much into the details of what we
01:00:17.160discussed. Do you think they've been put in a tough spot by all this? Yes, they've been put
01:00:24.240in a tough spot. And I know that I put them in a tough spot. And again, that's why I wanted to
01:00:27.980give them a heads up and just say, hey, I'm resigning. I do plan on making it public. I want
01:00:32.960to attempt to reach President Trump from the outside to let him know that he still has options
01:00:38.220and he can, there is a pathway for him to get us off of this trajectory. And also just to thank
01:00:44.560them for the opportunity to serve once again. But yeah, they're in a hard spot. I mean, they're
01:00:49.220doing everything I think they can to serve our country and to put it on a good trajectory and
01:00:54.620to support the president of the United States. I was just in a different role and I didn't feel
01:00:59.060that I could do that any longer. So I offered my resignation. Of course, we're all looking forward
01:01:03.900a bit to 2028 already, because that's what we do in this country. We have three-year
01:01:08.260presidential elections now. But do you think if JD were to run, and if Tulsi were to run,
01:01:16.080you know, she ran for president the last time, do you think that we would be surprised that
01:01:20.100they've had some big shift in their foreign policy views? Yeah, I can't speak for either
01:01:26.360one of them. Just out of respect, you know, you should probably ask those guys. I look forward,
01:01:31.180hopefully to you know either one of them running for president i think they're both very strong
01:01:34.460leaders so that's that's i think that's uh that's all i can say without saying you know too much
01:01:38.860that violates the confidentiality that i have a lot of people who are wondering whether we're
01:01:41.740going to see a joe kent on a on a ticket is that a possibility i've unsuccessfully ran for congress
01:01:47.900twice um so just to level set there i i think i'm gonna where i need to be i think working in
01:01:53.660the national security realm um is kind of where i belong i kind of have no desire to ever run
01:01:58.940run for office again. It was a good experience. I'm glad I went through it, but it's not one I
01:02:02.560have any desire to do again. I want to tell you that it was 2017 when a man named J.D. Vance
01:02:10.800said exactly that same thing to me. So never say never. I could see you potentially winding up on
01:02:17.080somebody's ticket in some way, or at least in an administration that is more in line with
01:02:22.440your sensibilities. We'll see down the line. That's for down the line. So you did go then
01:02:27.040and spoke with the president directly, to your credit.
01:02:29.400And it sounds like he was really nice about it, right?
01:04:50.780It's been my entire goal in this entire process to be respectful to the president because I'm very grateful for the president for what he's done for our country.
01:05:00.500And then also, too, so that hopefully at some point in time, if not me, but people who are saying similar things to me can have a chance to talk with President Trump, especially, you know, as soon as possible so that we can figure a way to get out of this situation that we're in.
01:05:17.320But again, I'm very grateful to President Trump, everything he's done for my family and also just for the United States in general.
01:05:23.440And so, you know, I think in terms of having to depart early, it worked out as well as it could have.
01:05:28.500Yeah. So I was kind of encouraged by that because, yeah, he's got a few more gears and he stayed in first gear when it comes to the brushback against you, which is promising to me, I think. Let's get into the allegations of anti-Semitism because that's all the rage these days.
01:05:44.260If you, you know, all along we were told you can criticize Israel, just, you know, don't be anti-Semitic and like promoting attacks on American Jewish people and so on.
01:05:52.500Of course, you haven't been and I haven't been.
01:05:55.320But as it turns out, if you criticize Israel, you will get called an anti-Semite by the same people who said you could call them.
01:06:00.900You could you could criticize Israel and not be called an anti-Semite.
01:06:03.980It was a lie what they've been saying.
01:06:05.720And you are being called an anti-Semite.
01:06:07.300I mean, of course, Mark Levin and Mitch McConnell, kind of out of nowhere, or somebody who works
01:06:16.280for him, puts out a tweet stating that your letter had, quote, virulent anti-Semitism and
01:06:21.940that anti-Semites have no place in either party and certainly do not deserve places of trust in
01:06:26.080our government. He then went on to also claim that isolationists should also play no role
01:06:33.020whatsoever in politics. So Mitch McConnell would like to get rid of all the isolationists who are
01:06:38.080in the Republican Party, and I guess Democrat Party as well. And he and others say that you're
01:06:42.540anti-Semitic. And I think what they're seizing on is the multiple references to Israel in your
01:06:47.680resignation letter. I'll just tell the audience what they are. You say it's clear we started this
01:06:52.400war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. You say that high-ranking Israeli
01:06:58.200officials and influential members of the media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly
01:07:02.520undermined the president's America First platform, deploying a misinformation campaign.
01:08:51.740Now, was that the only reason we went into Iraq? No. There was a lot of neoconservatives who probably felt fairly neutral on Israel that really wanted us to get involved in this war. There was the military-industrial complex. But a very influential factor was Israel and their lobby.
01:09:06.400Benjamin Netanyahu publicly even testified that Saddam Hussein was about to get a weapon
01:09:11.020of mass destruction, or actually already had a weapon of mass destruction, and really laid
01:09:15.120out that case and supported all of the other, what we found out to be manufactured intelligence
01:09:19.500about Saddam having a weapon of mass destruction.
01:09:23.680He was the Israeli finance minister at the time, but the head of the Likud party.
01:09:28.200The other party in Israel was in power at the time, led by Ariel Sharon, who initially
01:09:33.360said, no, we don't want to go into Iraq.
01:09:35.060We want to focus on Iran. But eventually he got behind the strikes or the operations in Iraq because he said it could be a lily pad for operations in Iran, which is essentially Netanyahu's argument as well.
01:09:47.040So the full weight of the Israeli lobby supported the neoconservative lobby to get us into the war in Iraq.
01:09:53.740Now, once we got into Iraq, it was quite the saga. We screwed things up so badly that we accidentally handed over the keys to the kingdom, essentially, to pro-Iranian Shias.
01:10:03.880Shia is the majority inside of Iraq. The pro-Iran wing of that took control through our own
01:10:09.340blundering over the course of several years. So by the time we left Iraq in 2011, Iran basically
01:10:15.520had been the biggest victor. And this was a major threat to Israel, because now you had basically a
01:10:20.560land bridge between Tehran and Damascus running through Baghdad. And this allowed the Syrian
01:10:25.400regime, which had always been kind of hostile to Israel, and helped Iran funnel money, weapons,
01:10:30.980training men and equipment to Hezbollah and to Hamas through Syria into Lebanon.
01:10:58.480And so we and other parts, other governments, including the Israelis, turned to the Sunni majority there to have an uprising.
01:11:06.460And we supported some of the most radical elements of that.
01:11:08.940Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda eventually, you know, splintered off into ISIS.
01:11:12.980And ISIS got so out of control, focusing a lot of their operations on trying to inspire attacks and trying to plan attacks over against us here in the homeland that we had to redeploy and fight against ISIS.
01:11:25.740But our support for elements affiliated with al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda eventually took over that entire government and are in charge to this day.
01:11:34.620And so, again, people will say, oh, your wife was killed by ISIS.
01:11:39.600We launched our dirty war, essentially, in Syria, the proxy war that we ran in Syria, largely at behest of the Israeli lobby.
01:11:46.500Because, again, we couldn't leave Iraq in control of Iranian-backed Shias, and we couldn't leave Bashir al-Assad in power because that created the Shia crescent that was directly a threat to Israel.
01:11:57.180So, again, we are really conducting U.S. foreign policy on behalf of another government, and our country paid dearly for that, and it continues to do so.
01:12:04.720We went back and actually just independently did a fact check on the Iraq war and Israel's role in it and confirmed virtually everything you just said, that Israeli intelligence and politicians suggested in 2002 and 2003 that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, that in September 2002, then former Prime Minister Netanyahu appeared before a U.S. congressional committee and said,
01:12:30.240look, Saddam is pursuing all avenues of developing weapons of mass destruction and the means to
01:12:35.560deliver them. He says, my information is three years old. I can only divulge it from my tenure
01:12:40.020as prime minister, which is three years old, but this is what I know. And he says, there's no
01:12:43.860question that Saddam has not given up on his nuclear program. He was not satisfied with the
01:12:47.880arsenal of chemical and biological weapons that he had. He was trying to perfect them constantly
01:12:51.740and went on. And then it's also been confirmed that AIPAC, which lobbies for Israeli interests
01:12:59.580here in America that their executive director boasted in January 2003 of the organization's
01:13:04.780success in quietly lobbying Congress to approve the use of force in Iraq and also wanted regime
01:13:10.940change very badly. And then when things started to go badly in Iraq, started to disavow that they
01:13:16.200had been doing that. But a whole bunch of members of Congress came out and said, that's bullshit.
01:13:19.980I was personally lobbied by you, AIPAC, to support the war in Iraq. So they were in favor of it and
01:13:28.160lobbied for it. That's not to take agency away from George W. Bush and Colin Powell and the ones
01:13:34.760domestically who pushed for it, but you're saying they were definitely interfering in our own march
01:13:39.800to war trying to push us. And is that how you would characterize what happened here, right?
01:13:45.240Because a lot of people have said, so are you suggesting that President Trump has no agency
01:13:49.300here? He's Israel's puppet. And I don't think it's quite that simple, but you put it in your
01:13:56.040downwards. I agree with you. It's not that simple. But look, the Israeli playbook for this is pretty
01:14:01.900well established. I mean, they have a plan and they ran it because it's effective. So what President
01:14:07.160Trump does have agency, but President Trump is a human. He's a very busy human. And I think just
01:14:12.280the way that his information environment was controlled through official channels that
01:14:17.720technically actually really weren't official because it wasn't coming from U.S. intelligence.
01:14:21.540He still took a lot of U.S. intelligence in, but the key influence that came from Israeli policymakers, Israeli politicians, probably even some pro-Israeli donors here in America on the official side in private conversations, but then also in the media environment, that effectively worked.
01:14:38.720And that created, I think, a position that President Trump had to take where he felt like he had no other options, when in fact he still had a good deal of options that were available to him.
01:14:49.240So, look, I think President Trump has a lot of personal agency, and I think he still does right now.
01:14:53.660And this is why I'm actually hopeful, I think, by going on shows like yours, like Tucker's and like other folks in the media kind of echoing generally what we're saying.
01:15:03.080My prayer is that he's going to see that it's not too late to kind of walk this back, because obviously the path that this pro-Israeli media ecosystem and unofficial advisors, official advisors, that has gotten us into the situation that we're in right now.
01:15:19.920And if you just look back to 20 years ago, it's the same playbook they ran in Iraq, which President Trump called out before most people in politics could, that it was a disaster for our country.
01:15:28.100So I really hope he reflects on kind of where we're at right now and where we've been before.
01:15:32.060Well, and Tucker and I are in the same situation in that we oppose this war, but we care about the president and are still completely rooting for the president and are rooting for victory for the United States in this conflict, though we wish we weren't in it.
01:15:45.200We're 100 percent behind the troops and hoping for an American victory.
01:15:48.860So hopefully the president will give an ear.
01:15:51.200I should point out on the Iraq war issue, Ariel Sharon, people who say Israel had nothing to do
01:15:57.060with us getting into the Iraq war will say Ariel Sharon, then PM of Israel, was against it. But it
01:16:02.120was one of those things where he was against it before he was for it. He later did get on board
01:16:06.140and said any postponement of an attack on Iraq will serve no purpose. His senior advisor told
01:16:13.140the Associated Press in that they said Israel intelligence officials had new evidence that
01:16:16.760Iraq was speeding up efforts to produce biological and chemical weapons. So they clearly had changed
01:16:22.880tactics when it was in the news that George W. Bush might be wavering on whether to attack.
01:16:28.620And that was when Ariel Sharon wavered on his own position of opposing it and got very much
01:16:32.680on board with pushing for the war in Iraq. So Israel did have a role in that. And I don't know
01:16:38.960that it was the chief role, but it was a meaningful role. And it's fair to call him out on it. It's
01:16:43.040not anti-Semitic, to be honest, about Israel's role. It's like they want to say you're like a
01:16:47.980conspiracy theorist saying, oh, all the terrible Jews are behind. That's not at all. That is a
01:16:54.720method. It's a tactic to undermine legitimate criticism of a foreign government. And it's
01:16:59.880so transparent, Joe. I don't know. Have you ever been on the receiving end of these kind of
01:17:03.340allegations before? Not to this ferocity. I mean, I got running for Congress. If I said that I
01:17:10.940I didn't think kids should, you know, be able to pick their own gender at age eight.
01:17:38.920Like if John Bolton, who was the former national security advisor to President Trump, and Lindsey Graham, who's been on some of the most prominent intelligence and armed services committees probably for as long as I've been alive because he's been in the Senate forever, if they had access to better information than me and they could actually prove their case, they'd be arguing it, but they can't.
01:17:56.760So they just have to go back to like, well, that's anti-Semitic and Iran was 10 minutes away from 10 nuclear bombs.
01:18:53.880And that got a lot of traction on the Internet.
01:18:56.620And my DMs on Twitter are open. I've been on his show before when I was running for Congress. So they have my contact information. But I think within like two or three hours, he was just like, I knew Kent was too big of a coward to come on my show. So if it's theater, then I have no desire to participate in that. But if he wants to have a conversation later, I'll have a conversation. Yeah, that's exactly. It's theater.
01:20:02.020Let's move on because you did say some things on Tucker that obviously caught my attention around Charlie Kirk.
01:20:09.640And I'm very, very interested in your thoughts on this because you suggested that there are viable leads that might suggest government involvement somehow around his assassination.
01:20:24.620You're not saying that there was proof, but that there were leads you would have liked to have pursued that were left dangling and that you were shut down from pursuing.
01:20:33.360And I wonder if you can expand on that.
01:20:59.600And basically from the time that Tyler Robinson turned himself in and was arrested and his fingerprints were found on the rifle, they basically, they being the FBI, said, hey, this is now going to go over to the Utah law enforcement and we are not investigating anything further.
01:21:16.820And there was a lot of back and forth about that because there were still, and again, not just my opinion and the opinion of the National Counterterrorism Center, there was other leads for us to run down.
01:21:27.540And I even spoke with members of the FBI who were kind of at the ground level, and they
01:23:25.780I mean, Charlie was probably instrumental in getting President Trump elected in 2024,
01:23:30.140and Charlie was very vocal against us going to war with Iran.
01:23:34.120He eventually said, OK, fine, midnight hammer, a limited strike, and then we're done.
01:23:38.420We're not going to go back for regime change.
01:23:39.680But he was continuing to speak out against the influence that the Israelis had on our
01:23:44.000foreign policy in the Middle East, in particular, this push to take us off to war with
01:23:48.740Iran. So I think that has to be looked at, the amount of pressure that Charlie Kirk was under
01:23:54.200from the donors, but then also his influence with President Trump. And the fact that the Israeli
01:23:59.660lobby really relied heavily on getting into that media ecosystem to influence President Trump,
01:24:07.800I think that can't be overlooked. Now, I'm not saying that that is a smoking gun. I'm not saying
01:24:11.960that that means really anything. I'm just saying that that needs to be considered into the Charlie
01:24:16.720Kirk investigation, but also to where we are right now as a country and what we're doing in
01:24:20.840the Middle East. Would that have been your job, Joe, to consider that piece or Kash Patel's?
01:24:27.000A combination. But if there is foreign involvement, that's where the National
01:24:30.800Counterterrorism Center comes in. Because we have more robust and broad authorities to
01:24:35.580investigate the foreign angle, the FBI has the more broad and robust authorities to investigate
01:24:41.300the domestic angle. So who has the ability to shut you down from that?
01:24:45.680So really, the way it happened was initially it was just like, hey, the FBI says you guys can't look into the case file.
01:24:51.000And when the case file is kind of where all the data is and you're done, you guys can't work here anymore.
01:24:55.880You guys can't work on this case anymore. We argued that we should still be involved in that case.
01:25:01.220And we won the argument. We got kind of put back on the case.
01:25:05.400But then after a while, the government has a great way of making things just die in process.
01:25:11.100And so essentially all of our requests, our ability to investigate, it was cut off.
01:25:15.220Our requests to investigate were kind of taken away and sort of died in the process.
01:25:19.520So I'm sure someone at some point in the government is going to come out and say, no, no, we're still looking into all leads in the Charlie Kirk case.
01:25:25.860But this is how you kill things in the government.
01:25:27.580You just let them die in this never-ending coordination process or requests that go unanswered.
01:25:34.320But the DOJ and the FBI was instrumental in saying, hey, we're done investigating Charlie Kirk.
01:25:40.240And they'll tell you, hey, everything's with Utah now because there's this ongoing trial against Tyler Robinson.
01:25:46.400But what about – I mean you mentioned putting a foreign government to the side.
01:25:50.360You mentioned the people who communicated about clearly Charlie's murder prior to the murder.
01:25:55.120We pulled just a couple of those just to recap it for the audience, where we saw communications like, okay, pulling it, an online friend of Twiggs, that was the boyfriend of the shooter, who goes by Chirbum75, wrote, Charlie Kirk deserved that shit.
01:26:13.180Let it die, let it die with a photo of Kirk.
01:26:53.840There were many, many, many. And would that be now, now that Utah's in the lead, wouldn't that still be an FBI investigation to figure out whether those people had advanced notice and were part of, you know, sort of trans TIFA?
01:27:07.500That's the allegation that these people are sort of members of the trans community or trans furry community and that they knew and possibly participated and maybe helped.
01:27:16.280So would that be FBI typically or would that be Utah?
01:27:19.720By and large, it would be the FBI, unless you can prove right away that those individuals are posting right from Utah.
01:27:26.120But in order to do that, there's a whole process of subpoenaing the social media platform, et cetera.
01:27:32.540But usually that's the FBI, just because they have the most robust tools and they're used to doing it.
01:27:37.600And again, Charlie Kirk was high profile enough that there was a case to be made that this could be in the federal purview.
01:27:44.940So, look, like I said, there's still lots of unanswered questions.
01:27:48.860And from where I was in the investigation, especially looking at the foreign ties, we were stopped.
01:27:54.620And there's still work that needs to be done there.
01:27:59.420I know I've been told by Kash Patel directly that they are looking into that trans-TIFA element.
01:28:05.480But it's been six months now, and there have been no additional arrests.
01:28:08.740And it really wouldn't take six months to figure out who these people were and to interview them and to, you know, potentially establish a link if there were one.
01:28:16.940It's an awfully great coincidence if they weren't involved.
01:28:20.800I mean, these people have predictive powers that we should all be consulting them on the stock market daily because they had the exact date and they had the exact manner that he would be shot and killed with.
01:28:32.680And there were multiple, multiple of them predicting that it would happen.
01:28:36.640So, extremely disturbing, to say the least.
01:28:39.920It's time for a little spring cleaning.
01:28:43.160Go drag your old dated wireless contract out of the closet and beat it with a broom.
01:28:48.640Then freshen things up by switching to Pure Talk, who gives you unlimited talk, text, and plenty of data for just $25 a month with no contract, no cancellation fees, and no overseas customer service if you ever need help.
01:29:01.620Maybe you'll like them as much as Lois.
01:30:24.400I mean, the Iranians have essentially shut down the flow of energy in the Straits of Hormuz, which, you know, we've known for years that would be part of the Iranian playbook.
01:30:35.180But they've been able to very effectively do that with a bare minimum of their military capabilities.
01:30:42.080They've also been targeting our bases in the region.
01:30:45.140We've lost Americans, tragically, but also the way that the energy infrastructure is being targeted in Qatar, being targeted inside Iran.
01:30:54.780This is going to set back world energy markets.
01:30:57.180We've already seen a major spike in the price of the pump, but the trickle-down effects of that are going to influence the ability for the world market to produce fertilizer.
01:31:06.780So there could be actual really drastic ramifications here.
01:31:10.460But also, I think a major issue with the war on Iran is that we've really only stated very,
01:31:16.240very tactical objectives, that we're going to take out their ballistic missile capabilities,
01:31:19.680we're going to take out their Navy, we're going to take out their military.
01:31:22.680And these are big picture items, but at the end of the day, they are very tactical.
01:31:27.660We haven't really stated exactly what our end state is.
01:31:31.180And you should never get into a war unless you can state what your end state is.
01:31:34.700And President Trump has said things like total surrender.
01:31:37.240And, you know, I mean, total surrender historically has meant like we drop a nuclear weapon in Japan.
01:31:45.460That was basically our demands in Japan in World War II.
01:31:48.580Or we fight out a bloody war and we make them totally surrender by a land occupation, both of which I think would be absolutely tragic, have major ramifications, make us less secure at the end of the day.
01:32:00.180But now we're in a war where we don't have an objective.
01:32:02.460However, our partner who we let drive the timeline for this conflict, they have a strategic objective that's very different than ours.
01:32:10.520And again, that is back to regime change at any cost.
01:32:14.640And the Israelis are completely fine, essentially, with just continuing to kill off the Iranian leadership until Iran just falls into a state of chaos, which would be catastrophic for our interests, for the interests of the GCC countries, for the flow of commerce in the Straits of Hormuz.
01:32:28.900It'll potentially even trigger a migration crisis into Europe.
01:32:32.480So again, we have to be sober and say like us and our key partner in this, who's been
01:32:36.780driving all of the military operations in the lead, we have different strategic objectives
01:32:43.960And so we've either we've got to find a way to get them under control.
01:32:48.060And as of right now, I see some indications that President Trump wants to do that in a
01:32:53.120truth he sent out yesterday or late last late two nights ago.
01:32:56.760He did say Israel will stop hitting all energy targets. And so I think it's important that President Trump stays firm on that. And if they don't stop hitting energy targets, he's got to start reining the Israelis in.
01:33:08.740Well, because there's a real question about whether they're doing that intentionally to
01:33:12.180keep the war going and to keep us involved and to get our allies involved and to make it a wider
01:33:17.140conflict that's more difficult for us to pull out of, and that this isn't just some accident
01:33:22.520that they keep bombing targets President Trump has told them not to, that they're doing it
01:33:27.380intentionally to widen the conflict and make it tougher for us to get out because it's in their
01:33:31.080interest for it to go on and on. They have no interest in our relationship with these other
01:33:35.820Arab countries being strong, or these other Arab countries being strong on their own.
01:33:41.260Yeah, exactly. I mean, we just have to be sober and say, like, Israel has different
01:33:45.460strategic objectives than we do. If they continue to hit the energy infrastructure,
01:33:50.840then it's evident to us that that is part of, that's not them making mistakes. Again,
01:33:54.960the Israelis have a very, very competent military. They're not making mistakes. They're doing this
01:33:59.620because they are pursuing their goals. So we can't look at, like, every little tactical decision
01:34:03.920they make, we have to look at what their broad objectives are. And their broad objectives,
01:34:07.000their strategic goal is different than ours. The Israelis have a very high tolerance for chaos,
01:34:12.980as long as that chaos can't come back and directly affect them. And so again, the Israelis are fine
01:34:18.700with chaos in Iran. That's only a problem if we're shoulder to shoulder with them,
01:34:24.280and there's ramifications for our actual allies in the Gulf, and also for the flow of energy and
01:34:31.120and the effect that we'll have here in the homeland.
01:34:33.700So again, you just got to have enough.
01:34:34.260Well, and they're talking about boots on the ground in Iran,
01:34:38.720American boots, not Israeli boots, American boots.
01:34:42.320We've just dispatched 5,000 troops over there.
01:34:45.920I don't know exactly what they're doing yet,
01:34:59.360We attacked it in part, but he was saying,
01:35:00.740I can go far worse, and I can decimate the energy facility there. But they're saying if he has to
01:35:07.020take Karg Island and make it happen, that's what will happen. He's trying to raise his leverage
01:35:10.280point against the Iranians to make them open up the strait by hitting them in this energy center.
01:35:16.120If he decides to have a coastal invasion, this is Axios reporting, then that's going to happen.
01:35:21.880But that decision has not yet been made. Then they go on, a senior official told Axios,
01:35:26.000we've always had boots on the ground in conflicts under every president, including Trump. I know
01:35:30.000this is a fixation in the media and I get the politics, but the president's going to do what's
01:35:34.020right. So we're, we're, we appear to be amping up our ability to put boots on the ground there.
01:35:39.300And it's all American boots, Joe. Um, and you tell me if we use 5,000 American troops to try to
01:35:46.820secure the Straits of Hormuz, we're going to see the death toll, the American death toll go up
01:35:52.480without question. Without question. I mean, when you put boots on the ground, it's inevitably
01:35:57.080going to be bloody and you're going to lose people. And you're right, those would be all
01:36:00.480American boots. The Israelis just don't have the, Israel's a small country, they don't have the
01:36:05.320combat power to deploy boots on the ground in a meaningful way. And this would be a disaster,
01:36:11.160I would heavily advise against it. I mean, just putting a small force on an island that's so
01:36:16.500close to all of Israel's ballistic missile and drone technology would make our guys essentially
01:36:21.640just sitting ducks. I have no doubt they could take the island. As a matter of fact,
01:36:25.400The Iranians would probably let them take the island because they would then have them essentially as hostages in that in that area.
01:36:32.620If we want to reopen the Straits of Hormuz, it's very simple.
01:36:35.500You get the Israelis to stop offensive operations and you get the negotiating table as fast as possible.
01:36:40.820President Trump did something very smart yesterday.
01:36:43.440He signaled through Scott Besson that we would lift sanctions on Iranian oil that's already on the water or in barges.
01:36:52.140And I think that right there is a step towards coming up with a peaceful solution to reopening the straits and getting us back to the negotiating table. All of that will be short-circuited if we put boots on the ground. Because the second we put boots on the ground, we inevitably will lose people. And then once you lose people, all you're going to hear from the media and then even a lot from people inside is that, hey, we've lost people. We can't withdraw now. We have to keep fighting. And that right there is the recipe for 20 years of quagmire.
01:37:17.780Mm hmm. And I mean, it's the ceremony that you participated in for your beloved wife at Dover, body after body after body coming home and the president standing there and saluting. And, you know, after a while, that takes its toll on the president's psyche, on the nation's psyche. And, you know, not to be too crass about it, but we do have midterm elections coming up in which the balance of power is very much up for grabs.
01:37:43.720Now there are serious discussions about whether the Republicans are likely to lose the Senate.
01:37:48.060They seem almost certain to lose the House, but likely to lose the Senate.
01:37:52.620So now you're talking about nonstop impeachment proceedings going on in the last two years of Trump's term and whether 2028 is seriously in danger.
01:38:00.600I mean, let me ask your opinion on that as somebody who has run for Congress twice.
01:38:03.900Right now, there's a division within the Republican Party.
01:38:07.960The division that's more neo-conny, the division that's much more in support of the president, no matter what he does, like the core-core diehard MAGA, is on one camp.
01:38:18.440And then there's the more isolationist wing of the party, which is smaller but real, in the other camp.
01:38:23.980And it's somewhere under 20 percent of the Republican Party, if you believe the polls.
01:38:28.920The problem for the Republicans is a candidate cannot win without that 20 percent.
01:38:34.540And if you would take a candidate from the 20%, he cannot win or she cannot win without support from the 80%.
01:38:40.180So the civil war that's happening within the Republican Party right now is great news for the Democrats, absolutely great news.
01:38:48.760Neither side seems likely to back down because these are deeply held beliefs by both sides.
01:38:53.100I mean, I think Cora Maga is just loyal to Trump, but like the neocons really think that this war is the greatest thing ever.
01:38:57.480And the isolationist wing really thinks it might be the worst thing ever, that we might be in the beginning of World War III here.
01:39:02.640So how do you see this playing out electorally?
01:39:05.800You know, it's hard to believe the polls.
01:39:08.500I do think there still is a lot of traditional thinking amongst, especially the baby boomer generation.
01:39:13.860They're consuming mainstream Fox News, et cetera.
01:39:17.280And they want to put their full faith behind President Trump.
01:39:20.740They feel like that's the patriotic thing to do, especially when we're at war.
01:39:24.100But I would just caution the people in Trump's orbit that are looking at those numbers, because right now those numbers probably look pretty good.
01:39:31.560But Bush's numbers look good after initial military operations, too.
01:39:35.300And we saw them quickly shift as you get further and further into the quagmire.
01:39:39.880But I think the important thing here is that, you know, President Trump won the popular vote and he won the popular vote by really energizing these people who typically don't vote.
01:39:50.140And they largely were able to do that effectively by having President Trump speak directly to the American people in long form on all these different podcasts, yours included.
01:40:01.100And I think these polls miss a lot of that demographic.
01:40:05.720So I think the more, when I would say, like, I don't know, America First, isolationists,
01:40:11.700I don't think we're going to say isolationists.
01:40:14.720But the people who don't want us getting involved in these wars, I think we're much more powerful
01:40:19.040because of social media platforms like you and I are speaking on right now, like Tucker's
01:40:23.420show, than I think the conventional wisdom really reveals.
01:40:28.020And so I think this argument, it's going to be key in the midterms to a lesser extent, but in the lead up to 2028, this is going to be a very key issue, especially because this war will have played out even further by then.
01:40:42.340I hope it's more of a theoretic debate than an actual practical debate.
01:40:46.220Well, I mean, I do too, but given the role that you just held and resigned from, the biggest concern that I've had since day one of this thing is domestic terror resulting from another Middle East war.
01:40:58.020I mean, you can go back to 9-11 and trace 9-11 to anger from these radical Islamists
01:41:04.580over our alignment with Israel and foreign policy and so on.
01:41:07.860And certainly what we've seen since the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.
01:41:12.880You know, I mean, as a Fox News anchor for the past, you know, much of the past 20 years,
01:41:16.420I was there for 14 years, just night after night after night,
01:41:19.540we covered yet another domestic terror attack that had happened from angry Islamists
01:41:24.340pissed off about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
01:41:27.080That's my biggest concern in this whole thing, Joe, and this is truly your area of expertise.
01:41:34.820Yeah, I mean, prior to this war kicking off, we at the National Counterterrorism Center and in coordination with the rest of the intelligence community, we authored a paper kind of on this topic and just said, hey, there is somewhat of a threat of potential sleeper cells, like where there's actual dedicated terrorists that came here specifically just to attack us at the right moment.
01:41:54.920However, the true threat that's manifested itself recently, especially in this conflict and even before, is that you get individuals who are radicalized by what they see on social media, in the media, as a result of our foreign policy or as a result of very clever propaganda and individuals that are here that are Muslims.
01:42:14.460But actually, even in the case of the Gaza conflict, we saw non-Muslims who were inspired to commit acts of terror and violence here in the homeland because of that.
01:42:24.700So the potential of blowback terrorism or of the war in Iran becoming part of the anti-Trump, anti-ICE, etc., protest movement inspiring more violence.
01:42:36.640I think at the time I said that that was the most likely course of action for what we would see.
01:42:41.060And then immediately when the war started, we saw a series of terror attacks that were indirectly, some of them more directly than others, linked to what's taking place overseas right now.
01:42:51.440And so that is a major issue. Our support for Israel does drive lots of blowback terrorism here at home.
01:42:59.020But then the other issue, too, is that at the end of the day, the government has a finite amount of resources and attention that they can pay to any given topic.
01:43:05.580Right now, the war on Iran is sucking up a lot of bandwidth, a lot of money, a lot of key decision-maker time.
01:43:12.240And it's diverting away from the fact that we still have millions of illegals in our country, that President Trump, again, he ran on this.
01:43:17.900He said the border is wide open. We've got to take care of that.
01:43:20.380And he's worked very diligently to secure the border.
01:43:24.740But I testified publicly as the NCTC director that we've identified over 18,000 known suspected terrorists who likely had access to America, many of whom had come here.
01:43:34.060And the further we dug into the data as to who was in our country, the more it became clear to me that we had no idea.
01:43:40.900You get different confusing data sets.
01:43:42.560And the only thing that was very clear to me was that for four years we didn't have any border security.
01:43:47.700So in my opinion, the more that we divert into these foreign adventures, especially one that's taking up so much time, money, and resources, that takes away the ability for us to focus here on the homeland and on our security, which, again, this is a key thing that President Trump ran on, and it affects our day-to-day security.
01:44:06.080Well, I mean, it's also like psychological capital, both for the president and for the
01:44:10.500American people, because already his approval numbers on foreign policy are way underwater,
01:44:16.000way underwater, and the economy times 10. I mean, his economic approval numbers are nil.
01:44:22.740The public does not approve of the job he's doing on that front. And so, you know, you can only
01:44:26.900expend so much of your negative capital on one thing. And already we were expending it on
01:44:31.760immigration. And that whole thing in the middle of the country in Minneapolis didn't help. It was
01:44:38.560a noble pursuit, but we've basically abandoned it. Tom Homan went in there and changed the policy to
01:44:44.600just the worst first, and it seems to be the worst only, is really what now we're focusing on on the
01:44:49.520immigration front, which is not what the American people wanted. They wanted everybody, everybody
01:44:53.100who was here illegally to go. And there's plenty of possibility that there are Iranian dissidents
01:45:01.360here who are not of the, you know, college educated, I want the old democracy, you know,
01:45:07.360of Iran back, but are of the radical Islamic part who got in under Joe Biden, who would love to
01:45:13.800unleash hell on us in the way that you've been talking about on, you know, Tucker's show and
01:45:17.860others suggesting it may not be some terror cell. It may just be individuals who are radicalized,
01:45:24.720like the guy who went into Austin and killed three people and shot another 15.
01:45:29.160Exactly. I mean, I think that's one of the biggest risks. And again, even some of these people, just because of our broken immigration system, they have status in America legally. So that to me is the biggest threat. And again, at the end of the day, when you're in charge, when you're in any leadership position, you do have to make hard decisions about where you're going to commit your resources.
01:45:48.560And right now I can tell you that the folks that are charged with our domestic security, border security, they're doing the best that they can.
01:45:54.080However, the focus of the administration right now, it's on this war with Iran.
01:45:58.500Just look at the budget request the Pentagon put in the other day.
01:46:07.280What you could fund domestically for $200 billion, and instead we're going to be spending it on fighting a war that we didn't have to start.
01:46:14.360Um, I want to ask you whether like, what do you, what's your advice? Cause you're obviously a very
01:46:19.760courageous person. I mean, truly like, I'm not trying to flatter you. You just obviously are.
01:46:25.120What's your advice to people who are out there who are in the Republican party, maybe operatives
01:46:29.940who are afraid. They're afraid to speak out against this because they know they will get
01:46:35.540called an anti-Semite immediately. I mean, you can just say I'm opposed to the war. I don't
01:46:39.760it's a good idea you'll get called an anti-semit um they they don't want the president crossing
01:46:45.360them they have dollars on the line with the republican party and they're worried about
01:46:50.000losing them if they cross the president on this what's your advice to them number one i i think
01:46:56.160it's time for them to really reflect on if they think we're on the proper trajectory for our
01:47:01.920country and i think if they have an honest assessment and they think why they supported
01:47:06.080President Trump in the first place and the foreign policy that he enacted in his first
01:47:09.740administration that he campaigned on, they'll see that we veered off the path. And I think if you
01:47:15.280truly care about the people that you love and that you're chartered to protect and to serve,
01:47:20.560when they go on the wrong path, you don't go on the wrong path with them. You try to guide them
01:47:25.640back onto the right path. That is the loving and caring thing to do. And I think if you truly
01:47:30.000believe in President Trump and this administration, then the right thing for you to do is have that
01:47:35.000reflection. If you disagree with me, fine. You think things are going great? Okay, that's fine.
01:47:39.120However, I think any honest reflection will say that we are not on a good path right now. And so
01:47:43.540the respectful thing to do of President Trump is to say, sir, we disagree. We want you to change
01:47:49.560course here. We have options. There are people who can offer you options. As a matter of fact,
01:47:53.220I think President Trump can come up with options on his own because he's a smart guy. But he does
01:47:57.200need to hear from his supporters that this is not where we need to be as a country. And people can
01:48:02.180need that either, you know, they can do it online. They can do it by, you know, calling their
01:48:05.360congressmen, calling their senators. There's ways to respectfully pressure President Trump to say,
01:48:10.380hey, sir, you have other options. And that's a big part of what I'm attempting to do right now.
01:48:17.440Do you think there are others in the Trump administration who feel the way you feel and
01:48:24.000the way I feel? Because, you know, if you look at the polls, like there was one NBC,
01:48:27.840they kind of got hit for this, but they just released a survey showing that President Trump
01:48:31.360allegedly has a 100% approval rating among Republicans who identify as MAGA, which had
01:48:38.620a lot of people saying, OK, the people who the president just the president Trump just
01:48:42.560said days ago, you're not MAGA if you don't support Mark Levin, which led to a lot of
01:49:27.520I mean, look, there are others. There's actually quite a few others in the administration who feel the way that I do. They may disagree with the tactics that I took, and that's fine. But I think if you get out there and you look at just X, you look at the social media platform that was largely responsible for President Trump's success, especially in the 2016 campaign, and you just see where a lot of people who are aligned with President Trump, what they're saying and how they're feeling right now about this war.
01:49:54.180I think it tells a much more accurate tale of where the base is at compared to some poll put up by, you know, whatever, ABC, NBC.
01:50:02.140And look, ABC, NBC, if I were them and I wanted President Trump to fail, I'd tell them, yeah, sir, everybody loves what you're doing right now.